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15  Cents. 


■>v  TRI-WEEKLY  PUBLICATION  OF  THE  BEST  CURREt^Y  ft  STANDARD  LITERM'JKE 


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ARATRA 


PENTELICI 


JOHN  RUSKIN 

Author  of  “ MODERN  PAINTERS,” 
OF  VENICE  ” Etc. 


STONES 


Entered  at  the  Post  Office,  N.  Y.,  as  sscond-class  matter. 
Copyright.  1884,  by  John  W.  Lovkll  Co. 


■ john-W*  Lovell-  coapany 


I£K  E R 


MATCHLESS  PIAKTOiS  . 

MATCHLESS  ^ UN|QN  SQUARE  N.  y.J 


IkltOW  Hll  Momcn  BY  THESE  PRESENTS,  That 
while  sundfy  and  almost  countless  imitations  of  and  substitutes  for 
Enoch  Morgan’s  Sons  Sapolio  are  offered  by  unscrupulous  parties,  who 
do  not  hesitate  to  represent  them  as  the  original  article, 

Gbte  llnbenture  WITNESSETH,  That  there  is  but  one 
Sapolio,  to  wit:— the  original  article  manufactured  by  the  E 
Morgan’s  Sons  Co.,  of  New  Yprk, 
i in  popularity^  and  widely  known 
not  only  through  its  own  merits, 
but  through  the  many  original 
modes  which  have  been  adopted 
to  introduce  it  to  the  attention  of 
the  public.  Imitation  is  the  sin- 
cerest  flattery.  Cheapness  is  a 
poor  proof  of  quality.  Cheap  im- 
itations are  doubly  doubtful.  The 
most  critical  communities  are  the 
mcst  liberal  purchasers  of  Sapolio 
which  they  invariably  find  to  be 
worth  the  price  they  pay  for  it. 

In  Witness  Whereof,  we  hereby 
affix  a great  seal  and  our  cor- 
porate title. 

ENOCH  MORGAN’S  SONS  CO. 


FOR  MOTHERS  AND  DAUGHTERS 


A Manual  of  Hygiene  for  Women  and  the  Household.  Illustrated. 

By  Mrs.  E.  G.  Cook,  M.D. 

i 2mo,  extra  cloth,  - - - ~ ~ - $1.50 

This  new  work  has  already  received  strong  words  of  commendation 
from  competent  judges  who  have  had  the  opportunity  of  examining  it, 
:as  the  following  will  show  : 

Commonwealth,  Boston,  Mass. 

“This  is  a sensible  book,  written  in  a clear,  plain,  yet  delicate  style ; a book  which 
|o ught  to  be  in  the  hands  of  all  women  and  girls  old  enough  to  need  its  counsel.  It  treats 
Jof  topics  on  which  hinge  much  of  the  world’s  woe,  because  of  silent  suffering,  pale 
cheeks  and  broken  constitutions.” 

Enquirer,  Philadelphia,  Penn. 

“ It  is  a plain  sensible  talk  on  subjects  usually  considered  too  delicate  to  be  either 
spoken  or  written  about,  but  here  put  in  a way  that  cannot  offend  anybody.  It  is  a book 
that  every  mother  should  read  and  then  put  in  her  daughter’s  hand.” 

N.  Y.  Times. 

“ A book  of  sound  advice  to  women.” 

LADIES  WANTED  to  act  as  Agents,  to  whom  liberal  terms 
will  be  given.  Copies  sent  by  mail,  post-paid,  on  receipt  of  price,  $1.50. 

Address 

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EXAMINE  BALL’S  CORSETS. 

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USE  BALL’S  CORSETS. 

Owing  to  their  peculiar  construction  it  is  impossible  to  break  steels  in 
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JOHN  RUSKIN’S  WORKS 

- CONTAINED  IN  LOVELL’S  LIBRARY. 

NO.  PRICE, 


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IOC. 

505  Crown  of  Wild  Olives, 

IOC. 

510  Ethics  of  the  Dust, 

IOC. 

516  Queen  of  the  Air,  .... 

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521  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture, 

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537  Lectures  on  Architecture  and  Painting, 

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1 

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• 

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* 

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« 

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9 

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668  St.  Mark’s  Rest,  ..... 

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670  Deucalion,  ..... 

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1 

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677  Aratra  Pentelici,  ..... 

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D 

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682  Proserpina,  ...... 

• 

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685  Val  d’Arno,  . .... 

f 

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688  Loye’s  Meinie,  ..... 

ft 

> 

*5e» 

TROW’S 

PRJWTfNG  AND  BOOKBINDING  COWPANT, 
NEW  YORK, 


CONTENTS. 


Preface 


PAGE 

. 5 


LECTURE 

I.  Of  the  Division  of  Arts 

II.  Idolatry 

III.  Imagination 

• ' 

IV.  Likeness 

V.  Structure 

VI.  The  School  of  Athens 

r 


9 

26 

44 

72 

94 

117 


jf  £ ■ * 


PREFACE. 


I must  pray  the  readers  of  the  following  Lectures  to  re- 
member that  the  duty  at  present  laid  on  me  at  Oxford  is  of 
an  exceptionally  complex  character.  Directly,  it  is  to  awaken 
the  interest  of  my  pupils  in  a study  which  they  have  hitherto 
found  unattractive,  and  imagined  to  be  useless  ; but  more 
imperatively,  it  is  to  define  the  principles  by  which  the  study 
itself  should  be  guided  ; and  to  vindicate  their  security 
against  the  doubts  with  which  frequent  discussion  has  lately 
encumbered  a subject  which  all  think  themselves  competent 
to  discuss.  The  possibility  of  such  vindication  is,  of  course, 
implied  in  the  original  consent  of  the  Universities  to  the  es- 
tablishment of  Art  Professorships.  Nothing  can  be  .made  an 
element  of  education  of  wdiich  it  is  impossible  to  determine 
whether  it  is  ill  done  or  well ; and  the  clear  assertion  that 
there  is  a canon  law  in  formative  Art  is,  at  this  time,  a more 
important  function  of  each  University  than  the  instruction  of 
its  younger  members  in  any  branch  of  practical  skill.  It  mat- 
ters comparatively  little  whether  few  or  many  of  our  students 
learn  to  draw ; but  it  matters  much  that  all  who  learn  should 
be  taught  with  accuracy.  And  the  number  who  may  be  justi- 
fiably advised  to  give  any  part  of  the  time  they  spend  at  col- 
lege to  the  study  of  painting  or  sculpture  ought  to  depend, 
and  finally  must  depend,  on  their  being  certified  that  paint- 
ing and  sculpture,  no  less  than  language  or  than  reasoning, 
have  grammar  and  method, — that  they  permit  a recognizable 
distinction  between  scholarship  and  ignorance,  and  enforce  a 
constant  distinction  between  Eight  and  Wrong. 

This  opening  course  of  Lectures  on  Sculpture  is  therefore 
restricted  to  the  statement,  not  only  of  first  principles,  but  of 


6 


PREFACE. 


those  which  were  illustrated  by  the  practice  of  one  school, 
and  by  that  practice  in  its  simplest  branch,  the  analysis  of 
which  could  be  certified  by  easily  accessible  examples,  and 
aided  by  the  indisputable  evidence  of  photography.* 

The  exclusion  of  the  terminal  Lecture  of  the  course  from 
the  series  now  published,  is  in  order  to  mark  more  definitely 
this  limitation  of  my  subject ; but  in  other  respects  the  Lect- 
ures have  been  amplified  in  arranging  them  for  the  press, 
and  the  portions  of  them  trusted  at  the  time  to  extempore 
delivery,  (not  through  indolence,  but  because  explanations  of 
detail  are  always  most  intelligible  when  most  familiar,)  have 
been  in  substance  to  the  best  of  my  power  set  down,  and  in 
what  I said  too  imperfectly,  completed. 

In  one  essential  particular  I have  felt  it  necessary  to  write 
what  I would  not  have  spoken.  I had  intended  to  make  no 
reference,  in  my  University  Lectures,  to  existing  schools  of 

* Photography  cannot  exhibit  the  character  of  large  and  finished  sculpt- 
ure ; but  its  audacity  of  shadow  is  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  more 
roughly  picturesque  treatment  necessary  in  coins.  For  the  rendering 
of  all  such  frank  relief,  and  for  the  better  explanation  of  forms  disturbed 
by  the  lustre  of  metal  or  polished  stone,  the  method  employed  in  the 
plates  of  this  volume  will  be  found,  I believe,  satisfactory.  Casts  are  first 
taken  from  the  coins,  in  white  plaster;  these  are  photographed,  and  the 
photograph  printed  by  the  heliotype  process  of  Messrs.  Edwards  and 
Kidd.  Plate  XII.  is  exceptional,  being  a pure  mezzotint  engraving  of 
the  old  school,  excellently  carried  through  by  my  assistant,  Mr.  Allen, 
who  was  taught,  as  a personal  favour  to  myself,  by  my  friend,  and  Tur- 
ner’s fellow-worker,  Thomas  Lupton.  Plate  IY.  was  intended  to  be  a 
photograph  from  the  superb  vase  in  the  British  Museum,  No.  564  in 
Mr.  Newton’s  Catalogue  ; but  its  variety  of  colour  defied  photography, 
and  after  the  sheets  had  gone  to  press  I was  compelled  to  reduce  Le 
Normand’s  plate  of  it,  which  is  unsatisfactory,  but  answers  my  imme- 
diate purpose. 

The  enlarged  photographs  for  use  in  the  Lecture  Room  were  made 
for  me  with  most  successful  skill  by  Sergeant  Spackman,  of  South  Ken- 
sington ; and  the  help  throughout  rendered  to  me  by  Mr.  Burgess  is 
acknowledged  in  the  course  of  the  Lectures  ; though  with  thanks  which 
must  remain  inadequate  lest  they  should  become  tedious ; for  Mr.  Bur- 
gess drew  the  subjects  of  Plates  III.,  X.,  and  XIII.  ; drew  and  engraved 
every  woodcut  in  the  book ; and  printed  all  the  plates  with  his  own 
hand. 


PREFACE. 


7 


Art,,  except  in  cases  where  it  might  be  necessary  to  point  out 
some  undervalued  excellence.  The  objects  specified  in  the 
eleventh  paragraph  of  my  inaugural  Lecture,  might,  I hoped, 
have  been  accomplished  without  reference  to  any  works  de- 
serving of  blame  ; but  the  Exhibition  of  the  Boyal  Academy 
in  the  present  year  showed  me  a necessity  of  departing  from 
my  original  intention.  The  task  of  impartial  criticism  * is 
now,  unhappily,  no  longer  to  rescue  modest  skill  from  neg- 
lect ; but  to  withstand  the  errors  of  insolent  genius,  and  abate 
the  influence  of  plausible  mediocrity. 

The  Exhibition  of  1871  was  very  notable  in  this  important 
particular,  that  it  embraced  some  representation  of  the  mod- 
ern schools  of  nearly  every  country  in  Europe  : and  I am  well 
assured  that  looking  back  upon  it  after  the  excitement  of  that 
singular  interest  has  passed  away,  every  thoughtful  judge  of 
Art  will  confirm  my  assertion,  that  it  contained  not  a single 
picture  of  accomplished  merit  ; while  it  contained  many  that 
w^ere  disgraceful  to  Art,  and  some  that  were  disgraceful  to 
humanity. 

It  becomes,  under  such  circumstances,  my  inevitable  duty 
to  speak  of  the  existing  conditions  of  Art  with  plainness 
enough  to  guard  the  youths  whose  judgments  I am  entrusted 
to  form,  from  being  misled,  either  by  their  own  naturally 
vivid  interest  in  what  represents,  however  unworthily,  the 
scenes  and  persons  of  their  own  day,  or  by  the  cunningly  de- 
vised, and,  without  doubt,  powerful  allurements  of  Art  which 
has  long  since  confessed  itself  to  have  no  other  object  than  to 
allure.  I have,  therefore,  added  to  the  second  of  these  Lect- 
ures such  illustration  of  the  motives  and  course  of  modern 
industry  as  naturally  arose  out  of  its  subject,  and  shall  continue 

*A  pamphlet  by  the  Earl  of  Southesk,  u Britain’s  Art  Paradise /’ 
(Edmonston  and  Douglas,  Edinburgh)  contains  an  entirely  admirable 
criticism  of  the  most  faultful  pictures  of  the  1871  Exhibition.  It  is  to 
be  regretted  that  Lord  Southesk  speaks  only  to  condemn  ; but  indeed, 
in  my  own  three  days’  review  of  the  rooms,  I found  nothing  deserving 
of  notice  otherwise,  except  Mr.  Hook’s  always  pleasant  sketches  from 
fisher-life,  and  Mr.  Pettie’s  graceful  and  powerful,  though  too  slightly 
painted,  study  from  Henry  VI. 


8 


PREFACE. 


in  future  to  make  similar  applications  ; rarely,  indeed,  per- 
mitting myself,  in  the  Lectures  actually  read  before  the 
University,  to  introduce  subjects  of  instant,  and  therefore  too 
exciting,  interest ; but  completing  the  addresses  which  I pre- 
pare for  publication  in  these,  and  in  any  other  particulars, 
which  may  render  them  more  widely  serviceable. 

The  present  course  of  Lectures  will  be  followed,  if  I am 
able  to  fulfil  the  design  of  them,  by  one  of  a like  elementary 
character  on  Architecture  ; and  that  by  a third  series  on 
Christian  Sculpture  : but,  in  the  meantime,  my  effort  is  to 
direct  the  attention  of  the  resident  students  to  Natural  His- 
tory, and  to  the  higher  branches  of  ideal  Landscape  : and  it 
will  be,  I trust,  accepted  as  sufficient  reason  for  the  delay 
which  has  occurred  in  preparing  the  following  sheets  for  the 
press,  that  I have  not  only  been  interrupted  by  a dangerous 
illness,  but  engaged,  in  what  remained  to  me  of  the  summer, 
in  an  endeavour  to  deduce,  from  the  overwhelming  complexity 
of  modern  classification  in  the  Natural  Sciences,  some  forms 
capable  of  easier  reference  by  Art  students,  to  whom  the 
anatomy  of  brutal  and  floral  nature  is  often  no  less  important 
than  that  of  the  human  body. 

The  preparation  of  examples  for  manual  practice,  and  the 
arrangement  of  standards  for  reference,  both  in  Painting  and 
Sculpture,  had  to  be  carried  on  meanwhile,  as  I was  able. 
For  what  has  already  been  done,  the  reader  is  referred  to  the 
Catalogue  of  the  Educational  Series,  published  at  the  end  of 
the  Spring  Term  ; of  what  remains  to  be  done  I will  make  no 
anticipatory  statement,  being  content  to  have  ascribed  to  me 
rather  the  fault  of  narrowness  in  design,  than  of  extravagance 
in  expectation.  ^ 

Denmark  Hill, 

25 th  November , 1871. 


ARATRA  PENTELICI. 


LECTURE  L 

OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 

November , 1870. 

1.  If,  as  is  commonly  believed,  the  subject  of  study  which 
it  is  my  special  function  to  bring  before  you  had  no  relation 
to  the  great  interests  of  mankind,  I should  have  less  courage 
in  asking  for  your  attention  to-day,  than  when  I first  addressed 
you  ; though,  even  then,  I did  not  do  so  without  painful  diffi- 
dence. For  at  this  moment,  even  supposing  that  in  other 
places  it  were  possible  for  men  to  pursue  their  ordinary  avo- 
cations undisturbed  by  indignation  or  pity  ; here,  at  least,  in 
the  midst  of  the  deliberative  and  religious  influences  of  Eng- 
land, only  one  subject,  I am  well  assured,  can  seriously  occupy 
your  thoughts — the  necessity,  namely,  of  determining  how  it 
has  come  to  pass,  that  in  these  recent  days,  iniquity  the  most 
reckless  and  monstrous  can  be  committed  unanimously, by  men 
more  geiierous  than  ever  yet  in  the  world’s  history  were  de- 
ceived into  deeds  of  cruelty  ; and  that  prolonged  agony  of 
body  and  spirit,  such  as  we  should  shrink  from  inflicting  wil- 
fully on  a single  criminal,  has  become  the  appointed  and  ac- 
cepted portion  of  unnumbered  multitudes  of  innocent  per- 
sons, inhabiting  the  districts  of  the  world  which,  of  all  others, 
as  it  seemed,  were  best  instructed  in  the  laws  of  civilization, 
and  most  richly  invested  with  the  honour,  and  indulged  in  the 
felicity,  of  peace. 

Believe  me,  however,  the  subject  of  Art — instead  of  being 


10 


ABA  TBA  BENTELICL 


foreign  to  these  deep  questions  of  social  duty  and  peril, — is 
so  vitally  connected  with  them,  that  it  would  he  impossible 
for  me  now  to  pursue  the  line  of  thought  in  which  I began 
these  lectures,  because  so  ghastly  an  emphasis  would  be  given 
to  every  sentence  by  the  force  of  passing  events.  It  is  well, 
then,  that  in  the  plan  I * have  laid  down  for  your  study,  we 
shall  now  be  led  into  the  examination  of  technical  details,  or 
abstract  conditions  of  sentiment ; so  that  the  hours  you  spend 
with  me  may  be  times  of  repose  from  heavier  thoughts.  But 
it  chances  strangely  that,  in  this  course  of  minutely  detailed 
study,  I have  first  to  set  before  you  the  most  essential  piece 
of  human  workmanship,  the  plough,  at  the  very  moment  when 
— (you  may  see  the  announcement 'in  the  journals  either  of 
yesterday  or  the  day  before) — the  swords  of  your  soldiers  have 
been  sent  for  to  be  sharpened , and  not  at  all  to  be  beaten  into 
ploughshares.  I permit  myself,  therefore,  to  remind  you  of 
the  watchword  of  all  my  earnest  writings — “ Soldiers  of  the 
Ploughshare,  instead  of  Soldiers  of  the  Sword  ” — and  I know 
it  my  duty  to  assert  to  you  that  the  work  we  enter  upon  to-day 
is  no  trivial  one,  but  full  of  solemn  hope  ; the  hope,  namely, 
that  among  you  there  may  be  found  men  wise  enough  to  lead 
the  national  passions  towards  the  arts  of  peace,  instead  of  the 
arts  of  war. 

I say  the  work  “ we  enter  upon,”  because  the  first  four  lect- 
ures I gave  in  the  spring  were  wholly  prefatory  ; and  the 
following  three  only  defined  for  you  methods  of  practice.  To- 
day we  begin  the  systematic  analysis  and  progressive  study  of 
our  subject. 

2.  In  general,  the  three  great,  or  fine,  Arts  of  Painting, 
Sculpture,  and  Architecture,  are  thought  of  as  distinct  from 
the  lower  and  more  mechanical  formative  arts,  such  as  car- 
pentry or  pottery.  But  we  cannot,  either  verbally,  or  with  any 
practical  advantage,  admit  such  classification.  How  are  we  to 
distinguish  painting  on  canvas  from  painting  on  china? — or 
painting  on  china  from  painting  on  glass? — or  painting  on 
glass  from  infusion  of  colour  into  any  vitreous  substance,  such 
as  enamel  ? — or  the  infusion  of  colour  into  glass  and  enamel 
from  the  infusion  of  colour  into  wool  or  silk,  and  weaving  of 


OF  T1IE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


11 


pictures  in  tapestry,  or  patterns  in  dress  ? You  will  find  that 
although,  in  ultimately  accurate  use  of  the  word,  painting 
must  be  held  to  mean  only  the  laying  of  a pigment  on  a surface 
with  a soft  instrument ; yet,  in  broad  comparison  of  the  func- 
tions of  Art,  we  must  conceive  of  one  and  the  same  great  artis* 
tic  faculty,  as  governing  every  mode  of  disposing  colours  in  a 
permanent  relation  on , or  in,  a solid  substance  ; whether  it  be  by 
tinting  canvas,  or  dyeing  stuffs ; inlaying  metals  with  fused 
flint,  or  coating  walls  with  coloured  stone. 

3.  Similarly  the  word  “ Sculpture,” — though  in  ultimate  ac- 
curacy it  is  to  be  limited  to  the  development  of  form  in  hard 
substances  by  cutting  away  portions  of  their  mass — in  broad 
definition,  must  be  held  to  signify  the  reduction  of  any  shape- 
less mass  of  solid  matter  into  an  intended  shape,  whatever  the 
consistence  of  the  substance,  or  nature  of  the  instrument  em- 
ployed ; whether  we  carve  a granite  mountain,  or  a piece  of 
box-wood,  and  whether  we  use,  for  our  forming  instrument, 
axe,  or  hammer,  or  chisel,  or  our  own  hands,  or  water  to 
soften,  or  fire  to  fuse  ; — whenever  and  however  we  bring  a 
shapeless  thing  into  shape,  we  do  so  under  the  laws  of  the  one 
great  Art  of  Sculpture. 

4.  Having  thus  broadly  defined  painting  and  sculpture,  we 
shall  see  that  there  is,  in  the  third  place,  a class  of  work  sep- 
arated from  both,  in  a specific  manner,  and  including  a great 
group  of  arts  which  neither,  of  necessity,  tint,  nor  for  the  sake 
of  form  merely,  shape,  the  substances  they  deal  with  ; but  con- 
struct or  arrange  them  with  a view  to  the  resistance  of  some 
external  force.  We  construct,  for  instance,  a table  with  a flat 
top,  and  some  support  c£  prop,  or  leg,  proportioned  in  strength 
to  such  weights  as  the  table  is  intended  to  carry.  We  con- 
struct a ship  out  of  planks,  or  plates  of  iron,  with  reference 
to  certain  forces  of  impact  to  be  sustained,  and  of  inertia  to  be 
overcome  ; or  we  construct  a wall  or  roof  with  distinct  refer- 
ence to  forces  of  pressure  and  oscillation,  to  be  sustained  or 
guarded  against ; and  therefore,  in  every  case,  with  especial 
consideration  of  the  strength  of  our  materials,  and  the  nature 
of  that  strength,  elastic,  tenacious,  brittle,  and  the  like. 

Now  although  this  group  of  arts  nearly  always  involves  the 


12 


ABATE  A PENTEL1GI. 


putting  of  two  or  more  separate  pieces  together,  we  must  not 
define  it  by  that  accident.  The  blade  of  an  oar  is  not  less 
formed  with  reference  to  external  force  than  if  it  were  made 
of  many  pieces ; and  the  frame  of  a boat,  whether  hollowed 
out  of  a tree-trunk,  or  constructed  of  planks  nailed  together, 
is  essentially  the  same  piece  of  art  ; to  be  judged  by  its 
buoyancy  and  capacity  of  progression.  Still,  from  the  most 
wonderful  piece  of  all  architecture,  the  human  skeleton,  to 
this  simple  one,*  the  ploughshare,  on  which  it  depends  for  its 
subsistence,  the  putting  of  two  or  more  pieces  together  is 
curiously  necessary  to  the  perfectness  of  every  fine  instru- 
ment ; and  the  peculiar  mechanical  work  of  Daedalus, — inlay- 
ing,— becomes  all  the  more  delightful  to  us  in  external  aspect, 
because,  as  in  the  jawbone  of  a Saurian,  or  the  wood  of  a 
bow,  it  is  essential  to  the  finest  capacities  of  tension  and  re- 
sistance. 

5.  And  observe  how  unbroken  the  ascent  from  this,  the 
simplest  architecture,  to  the  loftiest.  The  placing  of  the 
timbers  in  a ship’s  stem,  and  the  laying  of  the  stones  in  a 
bridge  buttress,  are  similar  in  art  to  the  construction  of  the 
ploughshare,  differing  in  no  essential  point,  either  in  that  they 
deal  with  other  materials,  or  because,  of  the  three  things  pro- 
duced, one  has  to  divide  earth  by  advancing  through  it, 
another  to  divide  water  by  advancing  through  it,  and  the 
third  to  divide  water  which  advances  against  it.  And  again, 
the  buttress  of  a bridge  differs  only  from  that  of  a cathedral 
in  having  less  weight  to  sustain,  and  more  to  resist.  We  can 
find  no  term  in  the  gradation,  from  the  ploughshare  to  the 
cathedral  buttress,  at  which  we  can  s§t  a logical  distinction. 

6.  Thus  then  we  have  simply  three  divisions  of  Art— one, 
that  of  giving  colours  to  substance  ; another,  that  of  giving- 
form  to  it  without  question  of  resistance  to  force  ; and  the 
third,  that  of  giving  form  or  position  which  will  make  it 
capable  of  such  resistance.  All  the  fine  arts  are  embraced 

* I had  a real  ploughshare  on  my  lecture-table ; but  it  Vould  inter- 
rupt the  drift  of  the  statements  in  the  text  too  long  if  I attempted  here 
to  illustrate  by  figures  the  relation  of  the  coulter  to  the  share,  and  of  the 
hard  to  the  soft  pieces  of  metal  in  the  share  itself. 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


13 


under  these  three  divisions.  Do  not  think  that  it  is  only  a 
.logical  or  scientific  affectation  to  mass  them  together  in  this 
manner  ; it  is,  on  the  contrary,  of  the  first  practical  im- 
portance to  understand  that  the  painter’s  faculty,  or  master- 
hood  over  colour,  being  as  subtle  as  a musician’s  over  sound, 
must  be  looked  to  for  the  government  of  every  operation  in 
'which  colour  is  employed  ; and  that,  in  the  same  manner,  the 
appliance  of  any  art  whatsoever  to  minor  objects  cannot  be 
right,  unless  under  the  direction  of  a true  master  of  that  art. 
Under  the  present  system,  you  keep  your  Academician  occu- 
pied only  in  producing  tinted  pieces  of  canvas  to  be  shown  in 
frames,  and  smooth  pieces  of  marble  to  be  placed  in  niches  ; 
while  you  expect  your  builder  or  constructor  to  design 
coloured  patterns  in  stone  and  brick,  and  your  china-ware 
merchant  to  keep  a separate  body  of  workwomen  who  can 
paint  china,  but  nothing  else.  By  this  division  of  labour,  you 
ruin  all  the  arts  at  once.  The  work  of  the  Academician  be- 
comes mean  and  effeminate,  because  he  is  not  used  to  treat 
colour  on  a grand  scale  and  in  rough  materials  ; and  your 
manufactures  become  base  because  no  well  educated  person 
sets  hand  to  them.  And  therefore  it  is  necessary  to  under- 
stand, not  merely  as  a logical  statement,  but  as  a practical 
necessity,  that  wherever  beautiful  colour  is  to  be  arranged, 
you  need  a Master  of  Painting ; and  wherever  noble  form  is 
to  be  given,  a Master  of  Sculpture  ; and  wherever  complex 
mechanical  force  is  to  be  resisted,  a Master  of  Architecture. 

7.  But  over  this  triple  division  there  must  rule  another  yet 
more  important.  Any  of  these  three  arts  may  be  either 
imitative  of  natural  objects  or  limited  to  useful  appliance. 
You  may  either  paint  a picture  that  represents  a scene,  or 
your  street  door,  to  keep  it  from  rotting  ; you  may  mould  a 
statue,  or  a plate  ; build  the  resemblance  of  a cluster  of  lotus 
stalks,  or  only  a square  pier.  Generally  speaking,  Painting 
and  Sculpture  will  be  imitative,  and  Architecture  merely 
useful  ; but  there  is  a great  deal  of  Sculpture — as  this  crystal 
ball  * for  instance,  which  is  not  imitative,  and  a great  deal  of 

* A sphere  of  rock  crystal,  cut  in  Japan,  enough  imaginable  by  the 
reader,  without  a figure. 


14 


ABATE  A PENTELIGL 


/ 


Architecture  which,  to  some  extent  is  so,  as  the  so  called  foils 
of  Gothic  apertures  ; and  for  many  other  reasons  you  will  find 
it  necessary  to  keep  distinction  clear  in  your  minds  between 
the  arts — of  whatever  kind — which  are  imitative,  and  produce 
a resemblance  or  image  of  something  which  is  not  present  ; 
and  those  which  are  limited  to  the  production  of  some  useful 
reality,  as  the  blade  of  a knife,  or  the  wall  of  a house.  You 
will  perceive  also,  as  we  advance,  that  sculpture  and  painting 
are  indeed  in  this  respect  only  one  art ; and  that  we  shall 
have  constantly  to  speak  and  think  of  them  as  simply  graphic , 
whether  with  chisel  or  colour,  their  principal  function  being 
to  make  us,  in  the  words  of  Aristotle,  “ OeupyriKol  rov  7repl  ra 
crw/xara  kolA/Ws  ” (Polit.  8,  3.),  “having  capacity  and  habit  of 
contemplation  of  the  beauty  that  is  in  material  things  ; ” while 
Architecture,  and  its  co-relative  arts,  are  to  be  practised  under 
quite  other  conditions  of  sentiment. 

8.  Now  it  is  obvious  that  so  far  as  the  fine  arts  consist 
either  in  imitation  or  mechanical  construction,  the  right  judg- 
ment of  them  must  depend  on  our  knowledge  of  the  things 
they  imitate,  and  forces  they  resist : and  my  function  of 
teaching  here  would  (for  instance)  so  far  resolve  itself,  either 
into  demonstration  that  this  painting  of  a peach,*  does  re- 
semble a peach,  or  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  this 
ploughshare  (for  instance)  is  shaped  so  as  to  throw  the  earth 
aside  with  least  force  of  thrust.  And  in  both  of  these  methods 
of  study,  though  of  course  your  own  diligence  must  be  your 
chief  master,  to  a certain  extent  your  Professor  of  Art  can 
always  guide  you  securely,  and  can  show  you,  either  that  the 
image  does  truly  resemble  what  it  attempts  to  resemble,  or 
that  the  structure  is  rightly  prepared  for  the  service  it  has  to 
perform.  But  there  is  yet  another  virtue  of  fine  art  which  is, 
perhaps,  exactly  that  about  which  you  will  expect  your  Pro- 
fessor to  teach  you  most,  and  which,  on  the  contrary,  is 
exactly  that  about  which  you  must  teach  yourselves  all  that 
it  is  essential  to  learn. 

9.  I have  here  in  my  hand  one  of  the  simplest  possible 

* One  of  William  Hunt’s  peaches  ; not,  I am  afraid,  imaginable  alto- 
gether, but  still  less  representable  by  figure. 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


15 


examples  of  tlie  union  of  the  graphic  and  constructive  pow- 
ers,— one  of  my  breakfast  plates.  Since  all  the  finely  archi- 
tectural arts,  we  said,  began  in  the  shaping  of  the  cup  and 
the  platter,  we  will  begin,  ourselves,  with  the  platter. 

Why  has  it  been  made  round  ? For  two  structural  reasons : 
first,  that  the  greatest  holding  surface  may  be  gathered  into 
the  smallest  space  ; and  secondly,  that  in  being  pushed  past 
other  things  on  the  table,  it  may  come  into  least  contact  with 
them. 


Next,  why  has  it  a rim  ? For  two  other  structural  reasons  ; 
first,  that  it  is  convenient  to  put  salt  or  mustard  upon  ; but 
secondly  and  chiefly,  that  the  plate  may  be  easily  laid  hold  of. 
The  rim  is  the  simplest  form  of  continuous  handle. 

Farther,  to  keep  it  from  soiling  the  cloth,  it  will  be  wise  to 
put  this  ridge  beneath,  round  the  bottom  ; for  as  the  rim  is 
the  simplest  possible  form  of  continuous  handle,  so  this  is  the 
simplest  form  of  continuous  leg.  And  we  get  the  section 
given  beneath  the  figure  for  the  essential  one  of  a rightly 
made  platter. 


16 


AR  ATE  A PENTELIGL 


10.  Thus  far  our  art  has  been  strictly  utilitarian  having 
respect  to  conditions  of  collision,  of  carriage,  and  of  support. 
But  now,  on  the  surface  of  our  -piece  of  pottery,  here  ape  vari- 
ous bands  and  spots  of  colour  which  are  presumably  set  there 
to  make  it  pleasanter  to  the  eye.  Six  of  the  spots,  seen  closely, 
you  discover  are  intended  to  represent  flowers.  These  then 
have  as  distinctly  a graphic  purpose  as  the  other  properties 
of  the  plate  have  an  architectural  one,  and  the  first  critical 
question  we  have  to  ask  about  them  is,  whether  they  are  like 
roses  or  not.  I will  anticipate  what  I have  to  say  in  subse- 
quent lectures  so  far  as  to  assure  you  that,  if  they  are  to  be 
like  roses  at  all,  the  liker  they  can  be,  the  better.  Do  not 
suppose,  as  many  people  will  tell  you,  that  because  this  is  a 
common  manufactured  article,  your  roses  on  it  are  the  better 
for  being  ill-painted,  or  half-painted.  If  they  had  been  painted 
by  the  same  hand  that  did  this  peach,  the  plate  would  have 
been  all  the  better  for  it  ; but,  as  it  chanced,  there  was  no 
hand  such  as  William  Hunt’s  to  paint  them,  and  their  graphic 
power  is  not  distinguished.  In  any  case,  however,  that  graphic 
power  must  have  been  subordinate  to  their  effect  as  pink 
spots,  while  the  band  of  green-blue  round  the  plate’s  edge, 
and  the  spots  of  gold,  pretend  to  no  graphic  power  at  all,  but 
are  meaningless  spaces  of  colour  or  metal.  Still  less  have 
they  any  mechanical  office  : they  add  nowise  to  the  service- 
ableness of  the  plate  ; and  their  agreeableness,  if  they  possess 
any,  depends,  therefore,  neither  on  any  imitative,  nor  any 
structural,  character  ; but  on  some  inherent  pleasantness  in 
themselves,  either  of  mere  colours  to  the  eye  (as  of  taste  to 
the  tongue),  or  in  the  placing  of  those  colours  in  relations 
which  obey  some  mental  principle  of  order,  or  physical  prin- 
ciple of  harmony. 

11.  These  abstract  relations  and  inherent  pleasantnesses, 
whether  in  space,  number,  or  time,  and  whether  of  colours  or 
sounds,  form  what  we  may  properly  term  the  musical  or  har- 
monic element  in  every  art ; and  the  study  of  them  is  an  en- 
tirely separate  science.  It  is  the  branch  of  art-philosophy  to 
which  the  word  “ aesthetics  ” should  be  strictly  limited,  being 
the  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  things  that  in  themselves  are 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


17 


pleasant  to  the  human  senses  or  instincts,  though  they  repre- 
sent nothing,  and  serve  for  nothing,  their  only  service  being 
their  pleasantness.  Thus  it  is  the  province  of  aesthetics  to 
tell  you,  (if  you  did  not  know  it  before,)  that  the  taste  and 
colour  of  a peach  are  pleasant,  and  to  ascertain,  if  it  be  ascer- 
tainable, (and  you  have  any  curiosity  to  know,)  why  they  are  so. 

12.  The  information  would,  I presume,  to  most  of  you,  be 
gratuitous.  If  it  were  not,  and  you  chanced  to  be  in  a sick 
state  of  body  in  which  you  disliked  peaches,  it  would  be,  for 
the  time,  to  you  false  information,  and,  so  far  as  it  was  true 
of  other  people,  to  you  useless.  Nearly  the  whole  study  of 
aesthetics  is  in  like  manner  either  gratuitous  or  useless.  Either 
you  like  the  right  things  without  being  recommended  to  do 
so,  or  if  you  dislike  them,  your  mind  cannot  be  changed  by 
lectures  on  the  laws  of  taste.  You  recollect  the  story  of 
Thackeray,  provoked,  as  he  was  helping  himself  to  strawberries, 
by  a young  coxcomb’s  telling  him  that  “he  never  took  fruit 
or  sweets.”  “ That  ” replied,  or  is  said  to  have  replied,  Thack- 
eray, “ is  because  you  are  a sot,  and  a glutton.”  And  the 
whole  science  of  aesthetics  is,  jn  the  depth  of  it,  expressed  by 
one  passage  of  Goethe’s  in  the  end  of  the  2nd  part  of  Faust  ; 
— the  notable  one  that  follows  the  song  of  the  Lemures,  when 
the  angels  enter  to  dispute  with  the  fiends  for  the  soul  of 
Faust.  They  enter  singing — “ Pardon  to  sinners  and  life 
to  the  dust.”  Mephistoplieles  hears  them  first,  and  exclaims 
to  his  troop,  “Discord  I hear,  and  filthy  jingling ” — “ Mis- 
tone  hore  ich  ; garstiges  Geklimper.”  This,  you  see,  is  the 
extreme  of  bad  taste  in  music.  Presently  the  angelic  host 
begin  strewing  roses,  which  discomfits  the  diabolic  crowd  al- 
together. Mephistoplieles  in  vain  calls  to  them — “ What  do 
you  duck  and  shrink  for — is  that  proper  hellish  behaviour  ? 
Stand  fast,  and  let  them  strew  ” — “ Was  duckt  und  zuckt  ihr  ; 
ist  das  Hellen-brauch  ? So  haltet  stand,  und  lasst  sie  streuen.” 
There  you  have,  also,  the  extreme  of  bad  taste  in  sight  and 
smell.  And  in  the  whole  passage  is  a brief  embodiment  for 
you  of  the  ultimate  fact  that  all  aesthetics  depend  on  the 
health  of  soul  and  body,  and  the  proper  exercise  of  both,  not 
only  through  years,  but  generations.  Only  by  harmony  of 
2 


18 


All  AT II A PENTELIC1 . 


both  collateral  and  successive  lives  can  the  great  doctrine  of 
the  Muses  be  received  which  enables  men  “ x<u/>€«/  6p6ws” 
“ to  have  pleasures  rightly  ; ” and  there  is  no  other  definition 
of  the  beautiful,  nor  of  any  subject  of  delight  to  the  aesthetic 
faculty,  than  that  it  is  what  one  noble  spirit  has  created,  seen 
and  felt  by  another  of  similar  or  equal  nobility.  So  much  as 
there  is  in  you  of  ox,  or  of  swine,  perceives  no  beauty,  and 
creates  none  : what  is  human  in  you,  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  perfectness  of  its  humanity,  can  create  it,  and  receive. 

13.  Returning  now  to  the  very  elementary  form  in  which 
the  appeal  to  our  aesthetic  virtue  is  made  in  our  breakfast- 
plate,  you  notice  that  there  are  two  distinct  kinds  of  pleasant- 
ness attempted.  One  by  hues  of  colour  ; the  other  by  pro- 
portions of  space.  I have  called  these  the  musical  elements 
of  the  arts  relating  to  sight ; and  there  are  indeed  two  com- 
plete sciences,  one  of  the  combinations  of  colour,  and  the 
other  of  the  combinations  of  line  and  form,  which  might  each 
of  them  separately  engage  us  in  as  intricate  study  as  that  of 
the  science  of  music.  But  of  the  two,  the  science  of  colour  is, 
in  the  Greek  sense,  the  more  musical,  being  one  of  the  divis- 
ions of  the  Apoliine  power  ; and  it  is  so  practically  educa- 
tional, that  if  we  are  not  using  the  faculty  for  colour  to  dis- 
cipline nations,  they  will  infallibly  use  it  themselves  as  a 
means  of  corruption.  Both  music  and  colour  are  naturally 
influences  of  peace  ; but  in  the  war  trumpet,  and  the  war 
shield,  in  the  battle  song  and  battle  standard,  they  have  con- 
centrated by  beautiful  imagination  the  cruel  passions  of  men  ; 
and  there  is  nothing  in  all  the  Divina  Commedia  of  history 
more  grotesque,  yet  more  frightful,  than  the  fact  that,  from 
the  almost  fabulous  period  when  the  insanity  and  impiety  of 
war  wrote  themselves  in  the  symbols  of  the  shields  of  the 
Seven  against  Thebes,  colours  have  been  the  sign  and  stimu- 
lus of  the  most  furious  and  fatal  passions  that  have  rent  the 
nations  : blue  against  green,  in  the  decline  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire ; black  against  white,  in  that  of  Florence  ; red  against 
white,  in  the  wars  of  the  Royal  houses  in  England  ; and  at 
this  moment,  red  against  white,  in  the  contest  of  anarchy  and 
loyalty,  in  all  the  world. 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


19 


14.  On  the  other  hand,  the  directly  ethical  influence  of 
colour  in  the  sky,  the  trees,  flowers,  and  colouied  creatures 
round  us,  and  in  our  own  various  arts  massed  under  the  one 
name  of  painting,  is  so  essential  and  constant  that  we  cease  to 
recognize  it,  because  we  are  never  long  enough  altogether  de- 
prived of  it  to  feel  our  need ; and  the  mental  diseases  induced 
by  the  influence  of  corrupt  colour  are  as  little  suspected,  or 
traced  to  their  true  source,  as  the  bodily  weaknesses  resulting 
from  atmospheric  miasmata. 

15.  The  second  musical  science  which  belongs  peculiarly  to 
sculpture  (and  to  painting,  so  far  as  it  represents  form),  con- 
sists in  the  disposition  of  beautiful  masses.  That  is  to  say, 
beautiful  surfaces  limited  by  beautiful  lines.  Beautiful  sur- 
faces, observe  ; and  remember  what  is  noted  in  my  fourth  lect- 
ure of  the  difference  between  a space  and  a mass.  If  you 
have  at  any  time  examined  carefully,  or  practised  from,  the 
drawings  of  shells  placed  in  your  copying  series,  you  cannot 
but  have  felt  the  difference  in  the  grace  between  the  aspects 
of  the  same  line,  when  enclosing  a rounded  or  unrounded 
space.  The  exact  science  of  sculpture  is  that  of  the  relations 
between  outline  and  the  solid  form  it  limits  ; and  it  does  not 
matter  whether  that  relation  be  indicated  by  drawing  or  carv- 
ing,  so  long  as  the  expression  of  solid  form  is  the  mental  pur- 
pose ; it  is  the  science  always  of  the  beauty  of  relation  in  three 
dimensions.  To  take  the  simplest  possible  line  of  continuous 
limit — the  circle  : the  flat  disc  enclosed  by  it  may  indeed  be 
made  an  element  of  decoration,  though  a very  meagre  one  : 
but  its  relative  mass,  the  ball,  being  gradated  in  three  dimen- 
sions, is  always  delightful.  Here  * is  at  once  the  simplest, 
and  in  mere  patient  mechanism,  the  most  skilful,  piece  of 
sculpture  I can  possibly  show  you, — a piece  of  the  purest 
rock-crystal,  chiselled,  (I  believe,  by  mere  toil  of  hand,)  into 
a perfect  sphere.  Imitating  nothing,  constructing  nothing  ; 
sculpture  for  sculpture’s  sake,  of  purest  natural  substance  into 
simplest  primary  form. 

16.  Again.  Out  of  the  nacre  of  any  mussel  or  oyster-shell 
you  might  cut,  at  your  pleasure,  any  quantity  of  small  flat  cir- 

* The  crystal  hall  above  mentioned. 


20 


ARATRA  PE  NT E LIC  1. 


cular  discs  of  the  prettiest  colour  and  lustre.  To  some  extenfi 
such  tinsel  or  foil  of  shell  is  used  pleasantly  for  decoration. 
But  the  mussel  or  oyster  becoming  itself  an  unwilling  model- 
ler, agglutinates  its  juice  into  three  dimensions,  and  the  fact 
of  the  surface  being  now  geometrically  gradated,  together 
with  the  savage  instinct  of  attributing  value  to  what  is  diffi- 
cult to  obtain,  make  the  little  boss  so  precious  in  men’s  sight 
that  wise  eagerness  of  search  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  can 
be  likened  to  their  eagerness  of  search  for  it ; and  the  gates 
of  Paradise  can  be  no  otherwise  rendered  so  fair  to  their  poor 
intelligence,  as  by  telling  them  that  every  several  gate  was  of 
“ one  pearl.” 

17.  But  take  note  here.  We  have  just  seen  that  the  sum  of 
the  perceptive  faculty  is  expressed  in  those  words  of  Aristotle’s 
“ to  take  pleasure  rightly  ” or  straightly — xaWeiV  Now, 

it  is  not  possible  to  do  the  direct  opposite  of  that, — to  take 
pleasure  iniquitously  or  obliquely — xaiPeiV  or  o-koXl ws — 

more  than  you  do  in  enjoying  a thing  because  your  neighbour 
cannot  get  it.  You  may  enjoy  a thing  legitimately  because  it 
is  rare,  and  cannot  be  seen  often,  (as  you  do  a fine  aurora,  or 
a sunset,  or  an  unusually  lovely  flower)  ; that  is  Nature’s  way 
of  stimulating  your  attention.  But  if  you  enjoy  it  because 
your  neighbour  cannot  have  it — and,  remember,  all  value  at- 
tached to  pearls  more  than  glass  beads,  is  merely  and  purely 
for  that  cause, — then  you  rejoice  through  the  worst  of  idola- 
tries, covetousness  ; and  neither  arithmetic,  nor  writing,  nor 
any  other  so-called  essential  of  education,  is  now  so  vitally  nec- 
essary to  the  population  of  Europe,  as  such  acquaintance 
with  the  principles  of  intrinsic  value,  as  may  result  in  the 
iconoclasm  of  jewellery  ; and  in  the  clear  understanding  that 
we  are  not  in  that  instinct,  civilized,  but  yet  remain  wholly 
savage,  so  far  as  we  care  for  display  of  this  selfish  kind. 

You  think,  perhaps,  I am  quitting  my  subject,  and  proceed- 
ing, as  it  is  too  often  with  appearance  of  justice  alleged  against 
me,  into  irrelevant  matter.  Pardon  me  ; the  end,  not  only  of 
these  lectures,  but  of  my  whole  professorship,  would  be  ac- 
complished,— and  far  more  than  that, — if  only  the  English 
nation  could  be  made  to  understand  that  the  beauty  which  is 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


21 


indeed  to  be  a joy  for  ever,  must  be  a joy  for  all ; and  that 
though  the  idolatry  may  not  have  been  wholly  divine  which 
sculptured  gods,  the  idolatry  is  wholly  diabolic,  which,  for 
vulgar  display,  sculptures  diamonds. 

18.  To  go  back  to  the  point  under  discussion.  A pearl,  or 
a glass  bead,  may  owe  its  pleasantness  in  some  degree  to  its 
lustre  as  well  as  to  its  roundness.  But  a mere  and  simple 
ball  of  unpolished  stone  is  enough  for  sculpturesque  value. 
You  may  have  noticed  that  the  quatrefoil  used  in  the  Ducal 
Palace  of  Venice  owes  its  complete  loveliness  in  distant  effect 
to  the  finishing  of  its  cusps.  The  extremity  of  the  cusp  is  a 
mere  ball  of  Istrian  marble  ; and  consider  how  subtle  the 
faculty  of  sight  must  be,  since  it  recognizes  at  any  distance, 
and  is  gratified  by,  the  mystery  of  the  termination  of  cusp  ob- 
tained by  the  gradated  light  on  the  ball. 

In  that  Venetian  tracery  this  simplest  element  of  sculptured 
form  is  used  sparingly,  as  the  most  precious  that  can  be  em- 
ployed to  finish  the  fa9ade.  But  alike  in  our  own,  and  the 
French,  central  Gothic,  the  ball-flower  is  lavished  on  every 
line — and  in  your  St.  Mary’s  spire,  and  the  Salisbury  spire, 
and  the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  of  Paris,  the  rich  pleasantness 
of  decoration, — indeed,  their  so-called  “ decorated  style,” — 
consists  only  in  being  daintily  beset  with  stone  balls.  It  is 
true  the  balls  are  modified  into  dim  likeness  of  flowers  ; but 
do  you  trace  the  resemblance  to  the  rose  in  their  distant,  which 
is  their  intended  effect  ? 

19.  Bat  farther,  let  the  ball  have  motion  ; then  the  form  it 
generates  will  be  that  of  a cylinder.  You  have,  perhaps, 
thought  that  pure  Early  English  Architecture  depended  for 
its  charm  on  visibility  of  construction.  It  depends  for  its 
charm  altogether  on  the  abstract  harmony  of  groups  of  cylin- 
ders,* arbitrarily  bent  into  mouldings,  and  arbitrarily  associ- 

* All  grandest  effects  in  mouldings  may  be,  and  for  tlie  most  part 
have  been,  obtained  by  rolls  and  cavettos  of  circular  (segmental)  sec- 
tion. More  refined  sections,  as  that  of  the  fluting  of  a Doric  shaft,  are 
only  of  use  near  the  eye  and  in  beautiful  stone  ; and  the  pursuit  of  them 
was  one  of  the  many  errors  of  later  Gothic.  The  statement  in  the  text 
that  the  mouldings,  even  of  best  time,  “ have  no  real  relation  to  con- 


22 


ABATE  A PENT  ELI  CL 


ated  as  shafts,  having  no  real  relation  to  construction  whatso- 
ever, and  a theoretical  relation  so  subtle  that  none  of  us  had 
seen  it,  till  Professor  Willis  worked  it  out  for  us. 

20.  And  now,  proceeding  to  analysis  of  higher  sculpture, 
you  may  have  observed  the  importance  I have  attached  to  the 
porch  of  San  Zenone,  at  Verona,  by  making  it,  among  your 
standards,  the  first  of  the  group  which  is  to  illustrate  the  sys- 
tem of  sculpture  and  architecture  founded  on  faith  in  a future 
life.  That  porch,  fortunately  represented  in  the  photograph, 
from  which  Plate  I.  has  been  engraved,  under  a clear  and 
pleasant  light,  furnishes  you  with  examples  of  sculpture  of 
every  kind  from  the  flattest  incised  bas-relief  to  solid  statues, 
both  in  marble  and  bronze.  And  the  two  points  I have  been 
pressing  upon  you  are  conclusively  exhibited  here,  namely, — 
(1).  That  sculpture  is  essentially  the  production  of  a pleasant 
bossiness  or  roundness  of  surface  ; (2)  that  the  pleasantness  of 
that  bossy  condition  to  the  eye  is  irrespective  of  imitation  on 
one  side,  and  of  structure  on  the  other. 

21.  (1.)  Sculpture  is  essentially  the  production  of  a pleasant 
bossiness  or  roundness  of  surface. 

If  you  look  from  some  distance  at  these  two  engravings  of 
Greek  coins,  (place  the  book  open  so  that  you  can  see  the  op- 
posite plate  three  or  four  yards  off,)  you  will  find  the  relief  on 
each  of  them  simplifies  itself  into  a pearl-like  portion  of  a 
sphere,  with  exquisitely  gradated  light  on  its  surface.  When 
you  look  at  them  nearer,  you  will  see  that  each  smaller  por- 
tion into  which  they  are  divided — cheek,  or  brow,  or  leaf,  or 
tress  of  hair — resolves  itself  also  into  a rounded  or  undulated 
surface,  pleasant  by  gradation  of  light.  Every  several  sur- 
face is  delightful  in  itself,  as  a shell,  or  a tuft  of  rounded 
moss,  or  the  bossy  masses  of  distant  forest  would  be.  That 
these  intricately  modulated  masses  present  some  resemblance 
to  a girl’s  face,  such  as  the  Syracusans  imagined  that  of  the 
water-goddess  Arethusa,  is  entirely  a secondary  matter ; the 


struction,”  is  scarcely  strong  enough  : they  in  fact  contend  with,  and 
deny  the  construction,  their  principal  purpose  seeming  to  be  the  con- 
cealment of  the  joints  of  the  voussoirs. 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ADIS. 


2;j 


primary  condition  is  that  the  masses  shall  be  beautifully 
rounded,  and  disposed  with  due  discretion  and  order. 

22.  (2.)  It  is  difficult  for  you,  at  first,  to  feel  this  order  and 
beauty  of  surface,  apart  from  the  imitation.  But  you  can  see 
there  is  a pretty  disposition  of,  and  relation  between,  the  pro- 
jections of  a fir-cone,  though  the  studded  spiral  imitates  noth- 
ing. Order  exactly  the  same  in  kind,  only  much  more  com- 
plex ; and  an  abstract  beauty  of  surface  rendered  definite  by 
increase  and  decline  of  light — (for  every  curve  of  surface  has 
its  own  luminous  law,  and  the  light  and  shade  on  a parabolic 
solid  differs,  specifically,  from  that  on  an  elliptical  or  spheri- 
cal one) — it  is  the  essential  business  of  the  sculptor  to  obtain  ; 
as  it  is  the  essential  business  of  a painter  to  get  good  colour, 
whether  he  imitates  anything  or  not.  At  a distance  from  the 
picture,  or  carving,  where  the  things  represented  become  ab- 
solutely unintelligible,  we  must  yet  be  able  to  say,  at  a glance, 
“ That  is  good  painting,  or  good  carving.” 

And  you  will  be  surprised  to  find,  when  you  try  the  ex- 
periment, how  much  the  eye  must  instinctively  judge  in  this 
manner.  Take  the  front  of  San  Zenone  for  instance,  Plate  I. 
You  will  find  it  impossible  without  a lens,  to  distinguish  in 
the  bronze  gates,  and  in  great  part  of  the  wall,  anything  that 
their  bosses  represent.  You  cannot  tell  whether  the  sculpture 
is  of  men,  animals,  or  trees  ; only  you  feel  it  to  be  composed 
of  pleasant  projecting  masses  ; you  acknowledge  that  both 
gates  and  wall  are,  somehow,  delightfully  roughened  ; and 
only  afterwards,  by  slow  degrees,  can  you  make  out  what  this 
roughness  means  ; nay,  though  here  (Plate  III.)  I magnify  * 
one  of  the  bronze  plates  of  the  gate  to  a scale,  which  gives 
you  the  same  advantage  as  if  you  saw  it  quite  close,  in  the 
reality, — you  may  still  be  obliged  to  me  for  the  information, 
that  this  boss  represents  the  Madonna  asleep  in  her  little  bed, 
and  this  smaller  boss,  the  Infant  Christ  in  His  ; and  this  at 

* Some  of  the  most  precious  work  done  for  me  by  my  assistant  Mr. 
Burgess,  during  the  course  of  these  lectures,  consisted  in  making  en- 
larged drawings  from  portions  of  photographs.  Plate  III.  is  engraved 
from  a drawing  of  his,  enlarged  from  the  original  photograph  of  which 
Plate  I.  is  a reduction. 


24 


ARATRA  RE NT E LIG I. 


the  top,  a cloud  with  an  angel  coming  out  of  it,  and  these 
jagged  bosses,  two  of  the  Three  Kings,  with  their  crowns  on, 
looking  up  to  the  star,  (which  is  intelligible  enough  I admit) ; 
but  what  this  straggling,  three-legged  boss  beneath  signifies, 
I suppose  neither  you  nor  I can  tell,  unless  it  be  the  shep- 
herd’s dog,  who  has  come  suddenly  upon  the  Kings  with  their 
crowns  on,  and  is  greatly  startled  at  them. 

23.  Farther,  and  much  more  definitely,  the  pleasantness  of 
the  surface  decoration  is  independent  of  structure  ; that  is  to 
say,  of  any  architectural  requirement  of  stability.  The  greater 
part  of  the  sculpture  here  is  exclusively  ornamentation  of  a 
flat  wall,  or  of  door  panelling  ; only  a small  portion  of  the 
church  front  is  thus  treated,  and  the  sculpture  has  no  more  to 
do  with  the  form  of  the  building  than  a piece  of  a lace  veil 
would  have,  suspended  beside  its  gates  on  a festal  day  ; the 
proportions  of  shaft  and  arch  might  be  altered  in  a hundred 
different  ways,  without  diminishing  their  stability ; and  the 
pillars  would  stand  more  safely  on  the  ground  than  on  the 
backs  of  these  carved  animals. 

24.  I wish  you  especially  to  notice  these  points,  because  the 
false  theory  that  ornamentation  should  be  merely  decorated 
structure  is  so  pretty  and  plausible,  that  it  is  likely  to  take 
away  your  attention  from  the  far  more  important  abstract 
conditions  of  design.  Structure  should  never  be  contradicted, 
and  in  the  best  buildings  it  is  pleasantly  exhibited  and  en- 
forced ; in  this  very  porch  the  joints  of  every  stone  are  visible, 
and  you  will  find  me  in  the  Fifth  Lecture  insisting  on  this 
clearness  of  its  anatomy  as  a merit ; yet  so  independent  is  the 
mechanical  structure  of  the  true  design,  that  when  I begin  my 
Lectures  on  Architecture,  the  first  building  I shall  give  you  as 
a standard  will  be  one  in  which  the  structure  is  wholly  con- 
cealed. It  will  be  the  Baptistry  of  Florence,  which  is,  in  reality, 
as  much  a buttressed  chapel  with  a vaulted  roof,  as  the  Chap- 
ter House  of  York — but  round  it,  in  order  to  conceal  that 
buttressed  structure,  (not  to  decorate,  observe,  but  to  conceal) 
a flat  external  wall  is  raised  ; simplifying  the  whole  to  a mere 
hexagonal  box,  like  a wooden  piece  of  Tunbridge  ware,  on  the 
surface  of  which  the  eye  and  intellect  are  to  be  interested  by 


OF  THE  DIVISION  OF  ARTS. 


25 


the  relations  of  dimension  and  curve  between  pieces  of  en- 
crusting marble  of  different  colours,  which  have  no  more  to 
do  with  the  real  make  of  the  building  than  the  diaper  of  a 
Harlequin’s  jacket  has  to  do  with  his  bones. 

25.  The  sense  of  abstract  proportion,  on  which  the  enjoy- 
ment of  such  a piece  of  art  entirely  depends,  is  one  of  the 
aesthetic  faculties  which  nothing  can  develop  but  time  and 
education.  It  belongs  only  to  highly-trained  nations  ; and, 
among  them,  to  their  most  strictly  refined  classes,  though  the 
germs  of  it  are  found,  as  part  of  their  innate  power,  in  every 
people  capable  of  art.  It  has  for  the  most  part  vanished  at 
present  from  the  English  mind,  in  consequence  of  our  eager 
desire  for  excitement,  and  for  the  kind  of  splendour  that  ex- 
hibits wealth,  careless  of  dignity ; so  that,  I suppose,  there 
are  very  few  now  even  of  our  best-trained  Londoners  who 
know  the  difference  between  the  design  of  Whitehall  and  that 
of  any  modern  club-house  in  Pall-mall.  The  order  and  har- 
mony which,  in  his  enthusiastic  account  of  the  Theatre  of 
Epidaurus,  Pausanias  insists  on  before  beauty,  can  only  be 
recognized  by  stern  order  and  harmony  in  our  daily  lives  ; and 
the  perception  of  them  is  as  little  to  be  compelled,  or  taught 
suddenly,  as  the  laws  of  still  finer  choice  in  the  conception  of 
dramatic  incident  which  regulate  poetic  sculpture. 

26.  And  now,  at  last,  I think,  we  can  sketch  out  the  sub- 
ject before  us  in  a clear  light.  We  have  a structural  art, 
divine,  and  human,  of  which  the  investigation  comes  under 
the  general  term,  Anatomy  ; whether  the  junctions  or  joints 
be  in  mountains,  or  in  branches  of  trees,  or  in  buildings,  or 
in  bones  of  animals.  We  have  next  a musical  art,  falling  into 
two  distinct  divisions — one  using  colours,  the  other  masses, 
for  its  elements  of  composition  ; lastly,  we  have  an  imitative 
art,  concerned  with  the  representation  of  the  outward  appear- 
ances of  things.  And,  for  many  reasons,  I think  it  best  to 
begin  with  imitative  Sculpture  ; that  being  defined  as  the  art 
which , by  the  musical  disposition  of  masses , imitates  anything  of 
which  the  imitation  is  justly  pleasant  to  us  ; and  does  so  in  ac- 
cordance with  structural  laws  having  due  reference  to  the  ma - 
terials  employed . 


26 


AM  AT R A PENTEL1CI. 


So  that  you  see  our  task  will  involve  the  immediate  inquiry 
what  the  things  are  of  which  the  imitation  is  justly  pleasant 
to  us  : what,  in  few  words, — if  we  are  to  be  occupied  in  the 
making  of  graven  images — we  ought  to  like  to  make  images 
of.  Secondly,  after  having  determined  its  subject,  what  degree 
of  imitation  or  likeness  we  ought  to  desire  in  our  graven 
image ; and  lastly,  under  what  limitations  demanded  by 
structure  and  material,  such  likeness  may  be  obtained. 

These  inquiries  I shall  endeavour  to  pursue  with  you  to 
some  practical  conclusion,  in  my  next  four  lectures,  and  in  the 
sixth,  I will  briefly  sketch  the  actual  facts  that  have  taken 
place  in  the  development  of  sculpture  by  the  two  greatest 
schools  of  it  that  hitherto  have  existed  in  the  world. 

27.  The  tenor  of  our  next  lecture  then  must  be  an  inquiry 
into  the  real  nature  of  Idolatry ; that  is  to  say,  the  invention 
and  service  of  Idols  : and,  in  the  interval,  may  I commend  to 
your  own  thoughts  this  question,  not  wholly  irrelevant,  yet 
which  I cannot  pursue ; namely,  whether  the  God  to  whom 
we  have  so  habitually  prayed  for  deliverance  “ from  battle, 
murder,  and  sudden  death,”  is  indeed,  seeing  that  the  present 
state  of  Christendom  is  the  result  of  a thousand  years’  pray- 
ing to  that  effect,  “ as  the  gods  of  the  heathen  who  were  but 
idols  ; ” or  whether — (and  observe,  one  or  other  of  these  things 
must  be  true) — whether  our  prayers  to  Him  have  been,  by 
this  much,  worse  than  Idolatry  that  heathen  prayer  was  true 
prayer  to  false  gods  ; and  our  prayers  have  been  false  prayers 
to  the  True  One. 


LECTURE  II. 

IDOLATRY. 

November , 1870. 

28.  Beginning  with  the  simple  conception  of  sculpture  as 
the  art  of  fiction  in  solid  substance,  we  are  now  to  consider 
what  its  subjects  should  be.  What — having  the  gift  of  imag- 
ery— should  we  by  preference  endeavour  to  image  ? A ques- 


IDOLATRY. 


27 


tion  which  is,  indeed,  subordinate  to  the  deeper  one — why 
we  should  wish  to  image  anything  at  all. 

29.  Some  years  ago,  having  been  always  desirous  that  the 
education  of  women  should  begin  in  learning  how  to  cook,  I 
got  leave,  one  day,  for  a little  girl  of  eleven  years  old  to  ex- 
change, much  to  her  satisfaction,  her  schoolroom  for  the 
kitchen.  But  as  ill  fortune  would  have  it,  there  was  some 
pastry  toward,  and  she  was  left  unadvisedly  in  command  of 
some  delicately  rolled  paste  ; whereof  she  made  no  pies,  but 
an  unlimited  quantity  of  cats  and  mice. 

Now  you  may  read  the  works  of  the  gravest  critics  of  art 
from  end  to  end  ; but  you  will  find,  at  last,  they  can  give  you 
no  other  true  account  of  the  spirit  of  sculpture  than  that  it  is 
an  irresistible  human  instinct  for  the  making  of  cats  and  mice, 
and  other  imitable  living  creatures,  in  such  permanent  form 
that  one  may  play  with  the  images  at  leisure. 

Play  with  them,  or  love  them,  or  fear  them,  or  worship 
them.  The  cat  may  become  the  goddess  Paslit,  and  the 
mouse,  in  the  hand  of  the  sculptured  king,  enforce  his  endur- 
ing words  “ €5  €/xe  ns  opeto v evcrefiyjs  earoj  ; ” but  the  great 
mimetic  instinct  underlies  all  such  purpose;  and  is  zooplastic, 
— life-shaping, — alike  in  the  reverent  and  the  impious. 

30.  Is,  I say,  and  has  been,  hitherto  ; none  of  us  dare  say 
that  it  will  be.  I shall  have  to . show  you  hereafter  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  technic  energy  of  men,  as  yet,  has  indi- 
cated a kind  of  childhood  ; and  that  the  race  becomes,  if  not 
more  wise,  at  least  more  manly,*  with  every  gained  century. 
I can  fancy  that  all  this  sculpturing  and  painting  of  ours  may 
be  looked  back  upon,  in  some  distant  time,  as  a kind  of  doll- 
making, and  that  the  words  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  may  be 
smiled  at  no  more  : only  it  will  not  be  for  stars  that  we  desert 
our  stone  dolls,  but  for  men.  When  the  day  comes,  as  come 
it  must,  in  which  we  no  more  deface  and  defile  God’s  image 
in  living  clay,  I am  not  sure  that  we  ‘ shall  any  of  us  care  so 
much  for  the  images  made  of  Him,  in  burnt  clay. 

31.  But,  hitherto,  the  energy  of  growth  in  any  people  may 
be  almost  directly  measured  by  their  passion  for  imitative  art ; 

* Glance  forward  at  once  to  § 75,  read  it,  and  return  to  this. 


28 


ABATE  A PENTEL1GL 


namely,  for  sculpture,  or  for  the  drama,  which  is  living  and 
speaking  sculpture,  or,  as  in  Greece,  for  both  ; and  in  national 
as  in  actual  childhood,  it  is  not  merely  the  making , but  the 
making -believe ; not  merely  the  acting  for  the  sake  of  the 
scene,  but  acting  for  the  sake  of  acting,  that  is  delightful. 
And,  of  the  two  mimetic  arts,  the  drama,  being  more  passion- 
ate, and  involving  conditions  of  greater  excitement  and  lux 
ury,  is  usually  in  its  excellence  the  sign  of  culminating 
strength  in  the  people  ; while  fine  sculpture,  requiring  always 
submission  to  severe  law,  is  an  unfailing  proof  of  their  being 
in  early  and  active  progress.  There  is  no  instance  of  fine 
sculpture  being  produced  by  a nation  either  torpid , weak , or  in 
decadence.  Their  drama  may  gain  in  grace  and  wit ; but  their 
sculpture,  in  days  of  decline,  is  always  base. 

• 32.  If  my  little  lady  in  the  kitchen  had  been  put  in  com- 
mand of  colours,  as  well  as  of  dough,  and  if  the  paste  would 
have  taken  the  colours,  we  may  be  sure  her  mice  would  have 
been  painted  brown,  and  her  cats  tortoise-shell ; and  this, 
partly  indeed  for  the  added  delight  and  prettiness  of  colour 
itself,  but  more  for  the  sake  of  absolute  realization  to  her 
eyes  and  mind.  Now  all  the  early  sculpture  of  the  most  ac- 
complished nations  has  been  thus  coloured,  rudely  or  finely  ; 
and,  therefore,  you  see  at  once  now  necessary  it  is  that  we 
should  keep  the  term  “ graphic  ” for  imitative  art  generally  ; 
since  no  separation  can  at  first  be  made  between  carving  and 
painting,  with  reference  to  the  mental  powers  exerted  in,  or 
addressed  by,  them.  In  the  earliest  known  art  of  the  world, 
a reindeer  hunt  may  be  scratched  in  outline  on  the  flat  side 
of  a clean-picked  bone,  and  a reindeer’s  head  carved  out  of 
the  end  of  it ; both  these  are  flint-knife  work,  and,  strictly 
speaking,  sculpture  : but  the  scratched  outline  is  the  begin- 
ning of  drawing,  and  the  carved  head  of  sculpture  proper. 
When  the  spaces  enclosed  by  the  scratched  outline  are  filled 
with  colour,  the  colouring  soon  becomes  a principal  means  of 
effect  ; so  that,  in  the  engraving  of  an  Egyptian-colour  bas- 
relief  (S.  101),  Rosellini  has  been  content  to  miss  the  outlin- 
ing incisions  altogether,  and  represent  it  as  a painting  only. 
Its  proper  definition  is,  “ painting  accented  by  sculpture  ; ” 


IDOLATRY. 


29 


on  the  other  hand,  in  solid  coloured  statues, — Dresden  china 
figures,  for  example, — we  have  pretty  sculpture  accented  by 
painting ; the  mental  purpose  in  both  kinds  of  art  being  to 
obtain  the  utmost  degree  of  realization  possible,  and  the 
ocular  impression  being  the  same,  whether  the  delineation  is 
obtained  by  engraving  or  painting.  For,  as  I pointed  out  to 
you  in  my  fifth  lecture,  everything  is  seen  by  the  eye  as 
patches  of  colour,  and  of  colour  only  ; a fact  which  the  Greeks 
knew  well ; so  that  when  it  becomes  a question  in  the  dialogue 
of  Minos,  <c  TLVL  ovtl  rrj  oif/ec  oparcu  ra  opcop,€va,”  the  answer  is 
( c alcrOrjati  Tavrrj  rrj  Sta  tcjv  6(p0a\jjiu)V  Syj\ol(T7]  rj  pAv  t a yp(o- 
pra.” — “ What  kind  of  power  is  the  sight  with  which  we  see 
things  ? It  is  that  sense  which,  through  the  eyes,  can  reveal 
colours  to  us.” 

33.  And  now  observe  that  while  the  graphic  arts  begin  in 
the  mere  mimetic  effort,  they  proceed,  as  they  obtain  more 
perfect  realization,  to  act  under  the  influence  of  a stronger 
and  higher  instinct.  They  begin  by  scratching  the  reindeer, 
the  most  interesting  object  of  sight.  But  presently,  as  the 
human  creature  rises  in  scale  of  intellect,  it  proceeds  to  scratch, 
not  the  most  interesting  object  of  sight  only,  but  the  most  in- 
teresting object  of  imagination  ; not  the  reindeer,  but  the 
Maker  and  Giver  of  the  reindeer.  And  the  second  great  condi- 
tion for  the  advance  of  the  art  of  sculpture  is  that  the  race  should 
possess,  in  addition  to  the  mimetic  instinct,  the  realistic  or 
idolizing  instinct ; the  desire  to  see  as  substantial  the  powers 
that  are  unseen,  and  bring  near  those  that  are  far  off,  and  to 
possess  and  cherish  those  that  are  strange.  To  make  in  some 
way  tangible  and  visible  the  nature  of  the  gods — to  illustrate 
and  explain  it  by  symbols  ; to  bring  the  immortals  out  of  the 
recesses  of  the  clouds,  and  make  them  Penates  ; to  bring  back 
the  dead  from  darkness,  and  make  them  Lares. 

34.  Our  conception  of  this  tremendous  and  universal  human 
passion  has  been  altogether  narrowed  by  the  current  idea  that 
Pagan  religious  art  consisted  only,  or  chiefly,  in  giving  person- 
ality to  the  gods.  The  personality  was  never  doubted  ; it  was 
visibility,  interpretation,  and  possession  that  the  hearts  of 
men  sought.  Possession,  first  of  all — the  getting  hold  of 


30 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


some  hewn  log  of  wild  olive-wood  that  would  fall  on  its  knees 
if  it  was  pulled  from  its  pedestal — and,  afterwards,  slowly 
clearing  manifestation  ; the  exactly  right  expression  is  used 
in  Lucian’s  dream, — <baSt'as  eSafe  tov  Ala  ; “ Showed  * Zeus 
manifested  him,  nay,  in  a certain  sense,  brought  forth,  or 
created,  as  you  have  it,  in  Anacreon’s  ode  to  the  Eose,  of  the 
birth  of  Athena  herself — 

7To\efx6K.\ovov  r ’AOrjvrjv 

Kopvcfyrjs  iSetKwe  Zens. 

But  I will  translate  the  passage  from  Lucian  to  you  at  length 
— it  is  in  every  way  profitable. 

35.  “ There  came  to  me,  in  the  healing  + night,  a divine 
dream,  so  clear  that  it  missed  nothing  of  the  truth  itself  ; yes, 
and  still  after  all  this  time,  the  shapes  of  what  I saw  remain 
in  my  sight,  and  the  sound  of  what  I heard  dwells  in  my 
ears  ” — (note  the  lovely  sense  of  evavXos — the  sound  being  as 
of  a stream  passing  always  by  in  the  same  channel, — “ so  dis- 
tinct was  everything  to  me.  Twto  women  laid  hold  of  my 
hands  and  pulled  me,  each  towards  herself,  so  violently,  that 
I had  like  to  have  been  pulled  asunder  ; and  they  cried  out 
against  one  another, — the  one,  that  she  was  resolved  to  have 
me  to  herself,  being  indeed  her  own,  and  the  other  that  it  was 
vain  for  her  to  claim  what  belonged  to  others  ; — and  the  one 
who  first  claimed  me  for  her  own  was  like  a hard  worker,  and 
had  strength  as  a man’s  ; and  her  hair  was  dusty,  and  her 
hand  full  of  horny  places,  and  her  dress  fastened  tight  about 
her,  and  the  folds  of  it  loaded  with  white  marble-dust,  so  that 
she  looked  just  as  my  uncle  used  to  look  when  he  was  filing 
stones  : but  the  other  was  pleasant  in  features,  and  delicate  in 
form,  and  orderly  in  her  dress  ; and  so  in  the  end,  they  left 

* There  is  a primary  and  vulgar  sense  of  “exhibited”  in  Lucian's 
mind  ; but  the  higher  meaning  is  involved  in  it. 

f In  the  Greek,  “ ambrosial.”  Recollect  always  that  ambrosia,  as  food 
of  gods,  is  the  continual  restorer  of  strength  ; that  all  food  is  ambrosial 
when  it  nourishes,  and  that  the  night  is  called  “ambrosial  ” because  it 
restores  strength  to  the  soul  ’through  its  peace,  as,  in  the  23rd  Psalm, 
the  stillness  of  waters. 


IDOLATRY. 


31 


it  to  me  to  decide,  after  hearing  what  they  had  to  say,  with 
which  of  them  I would  go  ; and  first  the  hard  featured  and 
masculine  one  spoke  : — 

36.  “ ‘ Dear  child,  I am  the  Art  of  Image-sculpture,  which 
yesterday  you  began  to  learn  ; and  I am  as  one  of  your  own 
people,  and  of  your  house,  for  your  grandfather,  (and  she 
named  my  mother’s  father)  c was  a stone-cutter ; and  both 
your  uncles  had  good  name  through  me  : and  if  you  will  keep 
yourself  well  clear  of  the  sillinesses  and  fluent  follies  that  come 
from  this  creature,’  (and  she  pointed  to  the  other  woman)  ‘ and 
will  follow  me,  and  live  with  me,  first  of  all,  you  shall  be 
brought  up  as  a man  should  be,  and  have  strong  shoulders  ; 
and,  besides  that,  you  shall  be  kept  well  quit  of  all  restless 
desires,  and  you  shall  never  be  obliged  to  go  away  into  any 
foreign  places,  leaving  your  own  country  and  the  people  of 
your  house  ; neither  shall  all  men  praise  you  for  your  talk* 
And  you  must  not  despise  this  rude  serviceableness  of  my 
body,  neither  this  meanness  of  my  dusty  dress  ; for,  pushing 
on  in  their  strength  from  such  things  as  these,  that  great 
Phidias  revealed  Zeus,  and  Polyclitus  wrought  out  Hera,  and 
Myron  was  praised,  and  Praxiteles  marvelled  at : therefore 
are  these  men  worshipped  with  the  gods.’  ” 

37.  There  is  a beautiful  ambiguity  in  the  use  of  the  prep- 
osition with  the  genitive  in  this  last  sentence.  “ Pushing  on 
from  these  things  ” means  indeed,  justly,  that  the  sculptors 
rose  from  a mean  state  to  a noble  one  ; but  not  as  leaving  the 
mean  state  ; — not  as,  from  a hard  life,  attaining  to  a soft  one, 
— but  as  being  helped  and  strengthened  by  the  rough  life  to 
do  what  was  greatest.  Again,  “worshipped  with  the  gods” 
does  not  mean  that  they  are  thought  of  as  in  any  sense  equal 
to,  or  like  to,  the  gods,  but  as  being  on  the  side  of  the  gods 
against  what  is  base  and  ungodly  ; and  that  the  kind  of  worth 
which  is  in  them  is  therefore  indeed  worshipful,  as  having  its 
source  with  the  gods.  Finally,  observe  that  every  one  of  the 
expressions,  used  of  the  four  sculptors,  is  definitely  the  best 

* I have  italicised  this  final  promise  of  blessedness,  given  by  the 
noble  Spirit  of  Workmanship.  Compare  Carlyle’s  5th  Latter-day 
pamphlet,  throughout  ; but  especially  pp.  12-14,  in  the  first  edition. 


32 


ARATRA  PENTELIGl 


that  Lucian  could  have  chosen.  Phidias  carved  like  one  who 
had  seen  Zeus,  and  had  only  to  reveal  him  ; Polyclitus,  in 
labour  of  intellect,  completed  his  sculpture  by  just  law,  and 
wrought  out  Hera  ; Myron  was  of  all  most  praised , because  he 
did  best  what  pleased  the  vulgar  ; and  Praxiteles,  the  most 
wondered  at  or  admired,  because  he  bestowed  utmost  exqui- 
siteness of  beauty. 

38.  I am  sorry  not  to  go  on  with  the  dream  ; the  more  re- 
fined lady,  as  you  may  remember,  is  liberal  or  gentlemanly 
Education,  and  prevails  at  last ; so  that  Lucian  becomes  an 
author  instead  of  a sculptor,  I think  to  his  own  regret,  though 
to  our  present  benefit.  One  more  passage  of  his  I must  refer 
you  to,  as  illustrative  of  the  point  before  us  ; the  description 
of  the  temple  of  the  Syrian  Hieropolis,  where  he  explains  the 
absence  of  the  images  of  the  sun  and  moon.  “ In  the  temple 
itself,”  he  says,  <c  on  the  left  hand  as  one  goes  in,  there  is  set 
first  the  throne  of  the  sun  ; but  no  form  of  him  is  thereon,  for 
of  these  two  powers  alone,  the  sun  and  the  moon,  they  show 
no  carved  images.  And  I also  learned  why  this  is  their  law, 
for  they  say  that  it  is  permissible,  indeed,  to  make  of  the 
other  gods,  graven  images,  since  the  forms  of  them  are  not 
visible  to  all  men.  But  Helios  and  Selenaia  are  everywhere 
clear-bright,  and  all  men  behold  them  ; what  need  is  there 
therefore  for  sculptured  work  of  these,  who  appear  in  the 
air  ? ” 

39.  This,  then,  is  the  second  instinct  necessary  to  sculpt- 
ure ; the  desire  for  the  manifestation,  description,  and  com- 
panionship of  unknown  powers  ; and  for  possession  of  a bodily 
substance — the  “ bronze  Strasbourg,”  which  you  can  embrace, 
and  hang  immortelles  on  the  head  of — instead  of  an  abstract 
idea.  But  if  you  get  nothing  more  in  the  depth  of  the 
national  mind  than  these  two  feelings,  the  mimetic  and  idol- 
izing instincts,  there  may  be  still  no  progress  possible  for  the 
arts  except  in  delicacy  of  manipulation  and  accumulative 
caprice  of  design.  You  must  have  not  only  the  idolizing  in- 
stinct, but  an  yOos  which  chooses  the  right  thing  to  idolize ! 
Else,  you  will  get  states  of  art  like  those  in  China  or  India, 
non-progressive,  and  in  great  jiart  diseased  and  frightful, 


IDOLATRY. 


33 


being  wrought  under  the  influence  of  foolish  terror,  or  foolish 
admiration.  So  that  a third  condition,  completing  and  con- 
firming both  the  others,  must  exist  in  order  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  creative  power. 

40.  This  third  condition  is  that  the  heart  of  the  nation 
shall  be  set  on  the  discovery  of  just  or  equal  law,  and  shall  be 
from  day  to  day  developing  that  law  more  perfectly.  The 
Greek  school  of  sculpture  is  formed  during,  and  in  conse- 
quence of,  the  national  effort  to  discover  the  nature  of  justice  ; 
the  Tuscan,  during,  and  in  consequence  of,  the  national  effort 
to  discover  the  nature  of  justification.  I assert  to  you  at 
present  briefly,  what  will,  I hope,  be  the  subject  of  prolonged 
illustration  hereafter. 

41.  Now  when  a nation  with  mimetic  instinct  and  imagina- 
tive longing  is  also  thus  occupied  earnestly  in  the  discovery 
of  Ethic  law,  that  effort  gradually  brings  precision  and  truth 
into  all  its  manual  acts  ; and  the  physical  progress  of  sculpt- 
ure as  in  the  Greek,  so  in  the  Tuscan,  school,  consists  in 
gradually  limiting  what  was  before  indefinite,  in  verifying 
what  was  inaccurate,  and  in  humanizing  what  was  monstrous. 
I might  perhaps  content  you  by  showing  these  external  phe- 
nomena, and  by  dwelling  simply  on  the  increasing  desire  of 
naturalness,  which  compels,  in  every  successive  decade  of 
years,  literally,  in  the  sculptured  images,  the  mimicked  bones 
to  come  together,  bone  to  his  bone  ; and  the  flesh  to  come 
up  upon  them,  until  from  a flattened  and  pinched  handful  of 
clay,  respecting  which  you  may  gravely  question  whether  it 
was  intended  for  a human  form  at  all ; — by  slow  degrees,  and 
added  touch  to  touch,  in  increasing  consciousness  of  the 
bodily  truth, — at  last  the  Aphrodite  of  Melos  stands  before 
you,  a perfect  woman.  But  all  that  search  for  physical  accu- 
racy is  merely  the  external  operation,  in  the  arts,  of  the  seek- 
ing for  truth  in  the  inner  soul  ; it  is  impossible  without  that 
higher  effort,  and  the  demonstration  of  it  would  be  worse 
than  useless  to  you,  unless  I made  you  aware  at  the  same  time 
of  its  spiritual  cause. 

42.  Observe  farther  ; the  increasing  truth  in  representation 
is  co-relative  with  increasing  beauty  in  the  thing  to  be  repre- 


34 


AH  AT R A PENT  ELI  GI. 


sen  ted.  The  pursuit  of  justice  which  regulates  the  imitative 
effort,  regulates  also  the  development  of  the  race  into  dignity 
of  person,  as  of  mind ; and  their  culminating  art-skill  attains 
the  grasp  of  entire  truth  at  the  moment  when  the  truth  be- 
comes most  lovely.  And  then,  ideal  sculpture  may  go  on 
safely  into  portraiture.  But  I shall  not  touch  on  the  subject 
of  portrait  sculpture  to-day ; it  introduces  many  questions  of 
detail,  and  must  be  a matter  for  subsequent  consideration. 

43.  These  then  are  the  three  great  passions  which  are  con- 
cerned in  true  sculpture.  I cannot  find  better,  or,  at  least, 
more  easily  remembered,  names  for  them  than  “ the  Instincts 
of  Mimicry,  Idolatry,  and  Discipline  ; ” meaning,  by  the  last 
the  desire  of  equity  and  wholesome  restraint,  in  all  acts  and 
works  of  life.  Now  of  these,  there  is  no  question  but  that  the 
love  of  Mimicry  is  natural  and  right,  and  the  love  of  Disci- 
pline is  natural  and  right.  But  it  looks  a grave  question 
whether  the  yearning  for  Idolatry,  (the  desire  of  companion- 
ship with  images,),  is  right.  Whether,  indeed,  if  such  an  in- 
stinct be  essential  to  good  sculpture,  the  art  founded  on  it  can 
possibly  be  “fine”  art. 

44.  I must  now  beg  for  your  close  attention,  because  I have 
to  point  out  distinctions  in  modes  of  conception  which  will 
appear  trivial  to  you,  unless  accurately  understood  ; but  of 
an  importance  in  the  history  of  art  which  cannot  be  over- 
rated. 

When  the  populace  of  Paris  adorned  the  statue  of  Stras- 
bourg with  immortelles,  none,  even  the  simplest  of  the  pious 
decorators,  would  suppose  that  the  city  of  Strasbourg  itself, 
or  any  spirit  or  ghost  of  the  city,  was  actually  there,  sitting  in 
the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  The  figure  was  delightful  to  them 
as  a visible  nucleus  for  their  fond  thoughts  about  Strasbourg  ; 
but  never  for  a moment  supposed  to  be  Strasbourg. 

Similarly,  they  might  have  taken  delight  in  a statue  pur- 
porting to  represent  a river  instead  of  a city, — the  Bhine,  or 
Garonne,  suppose, — and  have  been  touched  with  strong 
emotion  in  looking  at  it,  if  the  real  river  were  dear  to  them, 
and  yet  never  think  for  an  instant  that  the  statue  was  the 
river. 


IDOLATRY. 


And  yet  again,  similarly,  but  much  more  distinctly,  they 
might  take  delight  in  the  beautiful  image  of  a god,  because  it 
gathered  and  perpetuated  their  thoughts  about  that  god  ; 
and  yet  never  suppose,  nor  be  capable  of  being  deceived  by 
any  arguments  into  supposing,  that  the  statue  was  the  god. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  a meteoric  stone  fell  from  the  sky  in 
the  sight  of  a savage,  and  he  picked  it  up  hot,  he  would  most 
probably  lay  it  aside  in  some,  to  him,  sacred  place,  and  be- 
lieve the  stone  itself  to  be  a kind  of  god,  and  offer  prayer  and 
sacrifice  to  it. 

In  like  manner,  any  other  strange  or  terrifying  object, 
such,  for  instance,  as  a powerfully  noxious  animal  or  plant, 
he  would  be  apt  to  regard  in  the  same  way  ; and  very  pos- 
sibly also  construct  for  himself  frightful  idols  of  some  kind, 
calculated  to  produce  upon  him  a vague  impression  of  their 
being  alive  ; whose  imaginary  anger  he  might  deprecate  or 
avert  with  sacrifice,  although  incapable  of  conceiving  in  them 
any  one  attribute  of  exalted  intellectual  or  moral  nature. 

45.  If  you  will  now  refer  to  § 52-59  of  my  Introductory 
Lectures,  you  will  find  this  distinction  between  a resolute 
conception,  recognized  for  such,  and  an  involuntary  appre- 
hension of  spiritual  existence,  already  insisted  on  at  some 
length.  And  you  will  see  more  and  more  clearly  as  we  pro- 
ceed, that  the  deliberate  and  intellectually  commanded  con- 
ception is  not  idolatrous  in  any  evil  sense  whatever,  but  is  one 
of  the  grandest  and  wholesomest  functions  of  the  human  soul ; 
and  that  the  essence  of  evil  idolatry  begins  only  in  the  idea 
or  belief  of  a real  presence  of  any  kind,  in  a thing  in  which 
there  is  no  such  presence. 

46.  I need  not  say  that  the  harm  of  the  idolatry  must  de- 
pend on  the  certainty  of  the  negative.  If  there  be  a real 
presence  in  a pillar  of  cloud,  in  an  unconsuming  flame,  or  in 
a still  small  voice,  it  is  no  sin  to  bow  down  before  these. 

But,  as  matter  of  historical  fact,  the  idea  of  such  presence 
has  generally  been  both  ignoble  and  false,  and  confined  to 
nations  of  inferior  race,  who  are  often  condemned  to  remain 
for  ages  in  conditions  of  vile  terror,  destitute  of  thought. 
Nearly  all  Indian  architecture  and  Chinese  design  arise  out 


36 


ABATE  A PENT E LIC I. 


of  such  a state  : so  also,  though  in  a less  gross  degree,  Nin- 
evite  and  Phoenician  art,  early  Irish,  and  Scandinavian;  the 
latter,  however,  with  vital  elements  of  high  intellect  mingled 
in  it  from  the  first. 

But  the  greatest  races  are  never  grossly  subject  to  such 
terror,  even  in  their  childhood,  and  the  course  of  their  minds 
is  broadly  divisible  into  three  distinct  stages. 

47.  (I.)  In  their  infancy  they  begin  to  imitate  the  real 
animals  about  them,  as  my  little  girl  made  the  cats  and  mice, 
but  with  an  undercurrent  of  partial  superstition— a sense  that 
there  must  be  more  in  the  creatures  than  they  can  see  ; also 
they  catch  up  vividly  any  of  the  fancies  of  the  baser  nations 
round  them,  and  repeat  these  more  or  less  apishly,  yet  rapidly 
naturalizing  and  beautifying  them.  They  then  connect  all 
kinds  of  shapes  together,  compounding  meanings  out  of  the 
old  chimeras,  and  inventing  new  ones  with  the  speed  of  a 
running  wild-fire  ; but  always  getting  more  of  man  into  their 
images,  and  admitting  less  of  monster  or  brute  ; their  own 
characters,  meanwhile,  expanding  and  purging  themselves, 
and  shaking  off  the  feverish  fancy,  as  springing  flowers 
shake  the  earth  off  their  stalks. 

48.  (II.)  In  the  second  stage,  being  now  themselves  perfect 
men  and  women,  they  reach  the  conception  of  true  and  great 
gods  as  existent  in  the  universe;  and  absolutely  cease  to 
think  of  them  as  in  any  wise  present  in  statues  or  images ; 
but  they  have  now  learned  to  make  these  statues  beautifully 
human,  and  to  surround  them  with  attributes  that  may  con- 
eentrate  their  thoughts  of  the  gods.  This  is,  in  Greece,  ac- . 
eurately  the  Pindaric  time,  just  a little  preceding  the  Pliidian  ; 
the  Pliidian  is  already  dimmed  with  a faint  shadow  of  infidel- 
ity ; still,  the  Olympic  Zeus  may  be  taken  as  a sufficiently 
central  type  of  a statue  which  was  no  more  supposed  to  be 
Zeus,  than  the  gold  or  elephants5  tusks  it  was  made  of  ; but 
in  which  the  most  splendid  powers  of  human  art  were  ex- 
hausted in  representing  a believed  and  honoured  God  to  the 
happy  and  holy  imagination  of  a sincerely  religions  people. 

49.  (III.)  The  third  stage  of  national  existence  follows,  in 
which,  the  imagination  having  now  done  its  utmost,  and  be- 


I DO  LAT11Y. 


ot 


in g partly  restrained  by  the  sanctities  of  tradition,  which 
permit  no  farther  change  in  the  conceptions  previously 
created,  begins  to  be  superseded  by  logical  deduction  and 
scientific  investigation.  At  the  same  moment,  the  elder  ar- 
tists having  done  all  that  is  possible  in  realizing  the  national 
conceptions  of  the  Gods,  the  younger  ones,  forbidden  to 
change  the  scheme  of  existing  representations,  and  incapable 
of  doing  anything  better  in  that  kind,  betake  themselves  to 
refine  and  decorate  the  old  ideas  with  more  attractive  skill 
Their  aims  are  thus  more  and  more  limited  to  manual  dexter- 
ity, and  their  fancy  paralyzed.  Also,  in  the  course  of  centu- 
ries, the  methods  of  every  art  continually  improving,  and  be- 
ing made  subjects  of  popular  inquiry,  praise  is  now  to  be  got, 
for  eminence  in  these,  from  the  whole  mob  of  the  nation  ; 
whereas  intellectual  design  can  never  be  discerned  but  by  the 
few.  So  that  in  this  third  sera  we  find  every  kind  of  imitative 
and  vulgar  dexterity  more  and  more  cultivated  ; while  design 
and  imagination  are  every  day  less  cared  for,  and  less  possible. 

50.  Meanwhile,  as  I have  just  said,  the  leading  minds  in 
literature  and  science  become  continually  more  logical  and 
investigative  ; and,  once  that  they  are  established  in  the 
habit  of  testing  facts  accurately,  a very  few  3^ears  are  enough 
to  convince  all  the  strongest  thinkers  that  the  old  imaginative 
religion  is  untenable,  and  cannot  any  longer  be  honestly 
taught  in  its  fixed  traditional  form,  except  by  ignorant  per- 
sons. And  at  this  point  the  fate  of  the  people  absolutely  de- 
pends on  the  degree  of  moral  strength  into  which  their  hearts 
have  been  already  trained.  If  it  be  a strong,  industrious, 
chaste,  and  honest  race,  the  taking  its  old  gods,  or  at  least 
the  old  forms  of  them,  away  from  it,  wrill  indeed  make  it 
deeply  sorrowful  and  amazed  ; but  will  in  no  whit  shake  its 
will,  nor  alter  its  practice.  Exceptional  persons,  naturally 
disposed  to  become  drunkards,  harlots,  and  cheats,  but  who 
had  been  previously  restrained  from  indulging  these  disposi- 
tions by  their  fear  of  God,  will,  of  course,  break  out  into  open 
vice,  when  that  fear  is  removed.  But  the  heads  of  the  fami- 
lies of  the  people,  instructed  in  the  pure  habits  and  perfect 
delights  of  an  honest  life,  and  to  whom  the  thought  of  a 


38 


ARATIIA  PENT  ELI CL 


Father  in  heaven  had  been  a comfort,  not  a restraint,  will 
assuredly  not  seek  relief  from  the  discomfort  of  their  orphan- 
age by  becoming  uncharitable  and  vile.  Also  the  high  leaders 
of  their  thought  gather  their  whole  strength  together  in  the 
gloom  ; and  at  the  first  entrance  of  this  valley  of  the  Shadow 
of  Death,  look  their  new  enemy  full  in  the  eyeless  face  of  him, 
and  subdue  him,  and  his  terror,  under  their  feet.  “ Metus 
omnes,  et  inexorabile  fatum,  . . . strepitumque  Aeherontis 
avari/>  This  is  the  condition  of  national  soul  expressed  by 
the  art,  and  the  words,  of  Holbein,  Durer,  Shakspeare,  Pope, 
and  Goethe. 

51.  But  if  the  people,  at  the  moment  when  the  trial  of 
darkness  approaches,  be  not  confirmed  in  moral  character, 
but  are  only  maintaining  a superficial  virtue  by  the  aid  of 
a spectral  religion ; the  moment  the  staff  of  their  faith  is 
broken,  the  character  of  the  race  falls  like  a climbing  plant 
cut  from  its  hold  : then  all  the  earthliest  vices  attack  it  as  it 
lies  in  the  dust;  every  form  of  sensual  and  insane  sin  is 
developed,  and  half  a century  is  sometimes  enough  to  close, 
in  hopeless  shame,  the  career  of  the  nation  in  literature,  art, 
and  war. 

52.  Notably,  within  the  last  hundred  years,  , all  religion  has 
perished  from  the  practically  active  national  mind  of  France 
and  England.  No  statesman  in  the  senate  of  either  country 
would  dare  to  use  a sentence  out  of  their  acceptedly  divine 
Revelation,  as  having  now  a literal  authority  over  them  for 
their  guidance,  or  even  a suggestive  wisdom  for  their  con- 
templation. England,  especially,  has  cast  her  Bible  full  in 
the  face  of  her  former  God  ; and  proclaimed,  with  open 
challenge  to  Him,  her  resolved  worship  of  His  declared 
enemy,  Mammon.  All  the  arts,  therefore,  founded  on  relig- 
ion, and  sculpture  chiefly,  are  here  in  England  effete  and 
corrupt,  to  a degree  which  arts  never  were  hitherto  in  the 
history  of  mankind  : and  it  is  possible  to  show  you  the  con- 
dition of  sculpture  living,  and  sculpture  dead,  in  accurate  op- 
position, by  simply  comparing  the  nascent  Pisan  school  in  Italy 
with  the  existing  school  in  England. 

53.  You  were  perhaps  surprised  at  my  placing  in  yoiu’ 


IDOLATRY ; 


39 

educational  series,  as  a type  of  original  Italian  sculpture,  the 
pulpit  by  Niccola  Pisano  in  the  Duomo  of  Siena.  I would 
rather,  had  it  been  possible,  have  given  the  pulpit  by  Giovanni 
Pisano  in  the  Duomo  of  Pisa  ; but  that  pulpit  is  dispersed  in 
fragments  through  the  upper  galleries  of  the  Duomo,  and  the 
cloister  of  the  Campo  Santo  ; and  the  casts  of  its  fragments 
now  put  together  at  Kensington  are  too  coarse  to  be  of  use  to 
you.  You  may  partly  judge,  however,  of  the  method  of  their 
execution  by  the  eagle’s  head,  which  I have  sketched  from  the 
marble  in  the  Campo  Santo  (Edu.,  No.  113),  and  the  lioness 
with  her  cubs,  (Edu.,  No.  103,  more  carefully  studied  at 
Siena)  ; and  I will  get  you  other  illustrations  in  due  time. 
Meanwhile,  I want  you  to  compare  the  main  purpose  of  the 
Cathedral  of  Pisa,  and  its  associated  Bell  Tower,  Baptistery, 
and  Holy  .Field,  with  the  main  purpose  of  the  principal  build- 
ing lately  raised  for  the  people  of  London.  In  these  days,  we 
indeed  desire  no  cathedrals ; but  we  have  constructed  an 
enormous  and  costly  edifice,  which,  in  claiming  educational 
influence  over  the  whole  London  populace,  and  middle  class, 
is  verily  the  Metropolitan  cathedral  of  this  century, — the 
Crystal  Palace. 

54.  It  was  proclaimed,  at  its  erection,  an  example  of  a newly 
discovered  style  of  architecture,  greater  than  any  hitherto 
known, — our  best  popular  writers,  in  their  enthusiasm,  de- 
scribing it  as  an  edifice  of  Fairyland.  You  are  nevertheless  to 
observe  that  this  novel  production  of  fairy  enchantment  is 
destitute  of  every  kind  of  sculpture,  except  the  bosses  pro- 
duced by  the  heads  of  nails  and  rivets;  while  the  Duomo  of 
Pisa,  in  the  wreathen  work  of  its  doors,  in  the  foliage  of  its 
capitals,  inlaid  colour  designs  of  its  fa9ade,  embossed  panels 
of  its  baptistery  font,  and  figure  sculpture  of  its  two  pulpits, 
contained  the  germ  of  a school  of  sculpture  which  was  to 
maintain,  through  a subsequent  period  of  four  hundred  years, 
the  greatest  power  yet  reached  by  the  arts  of  the  world  in 
description  of  Form,  and  expression  of  Thought. 

55.  Now  it  is  easy  to  show  you  the  essential  cause  of  the 
vast  discrepancy  in  the  character  of  these  two  buildings. 

In  the  vault  of  the  apse  of  the  Duomo  of  Pisa,  was  a 


40 


ABATE  A PENT  ELI Gl. 


colossal  image  of  Christ,  in  coloured  mosaic,  bearing  to  the 
temple,  as  nearly  as  possible,  the  relation  which  the  statue  of 
Athena  bore  to  the  Parthenon  ; and  in  the  same  manner,  con- 
centrating the  imagination  of  the  Pisan  on  the  attributes  of  the 
God  in  whom  he  believed. 

In  precisely  the  same  position  with  respect  to  the  nave  of 
the  building,  but  of  larger  size,  as  proportioned  to  the  three 
or  four  times  greater  scale  of  the  whole,  a colossal  piece  of 
sculpture  was  placed  by  English  designers,  at  the  extremity 
of  the  Crystal  Palace,  in  preparation  for  their  solemnities  in 
honour  of  the  birthday  of  Christ,  in  December,  1867  or  1868. 

That  piece  of  sculpture  was  the  face  of  the  clown  in  a 
pantomime,  some  twelve  feet  high  from  brow  to  chin,  which 
face,  being  moved  by  the  mechanism  which  is  our  pride,  every 
half  minute  opened  its  mouth  from  ear  to  ear,  showed  its 
teeth,  and  revolved  its  eyes,  the  force  of  these  periodical 
seasons  of  expression  being  increased  and  explained  by  the 
illuminated  inscription  underneath  “Here  we  are  again.” 

56.  When  it  is  assumed,  and  with  too  good  reason,  that 
the  mind  of  the  English  populace  is  to  be  addressed,  in  the 
principal  Sacred  Festival  of  its  year,  by  sculpture  such  as  this, 
I need  scarcely  point  out  to  you  that  the  hope  is  absolutely 
futile  of  advancing  their  intelligence  by  collecting  within  this 
building,  (itself  devoid  absolutely  of  every  kind  of  art,  and  so 
vilely  constructed  that  those  who  traverse  it  are  continually  in 
danger  of  falling  over  the  cross-bars  that  bind  it  together) 
examples  of  sculpture  filched  indiscriminately  from  the  past 
work,  bad  and  good,  of  Turks,  Greeks,  Homans,  Moors,  and 
Christians,  miscoloured,  misplaced,  and  misinterpreted  ; * 
here  thrust  into  unseemly  corners,  and  there  mortised  together 
into  mere  confusion  of  heterogeneous  obstacle  ; pronouncing 
itself  hourly  more  intolerable  in  weariness,  until  any  kind  of 
relief  is  sought  from  it  in  steam  wheelbarrows  or  cheap  toy- 

* “Falsely  represented,”  would  be  the  better  expression.  In  the  cast 
of  the  tomb  of  Queen  Eleanor,  for  a single  instance,  the  Gothic  foliage 
of  which  one  essential  virtue  is  its  change  over  every  shield,  is  repre- 
sented by  a repetition  of  casts  from  one  mould,  of  which  the  desjgn  it- 
self is  entirely  conjectural. 


IDOLATRY. 


41 


shops  ; and  most  of  all  in  beer  and  meat,  the  corks  and  the 
bones  being  dropped  through  the  chinks  in  the  damp  deal 
flooring  of  the  English  Fairy  Palace. 

57.  But  you  will  probably  think  me  unjust  in  assuming 
that  a building  prepared  only  for  the  amusement  of  the  peo- 
ple can  typically  represent  the  architecture  or  sculpture  of 
modern  England.  You  may  urge,  that  I ought  rather  to  de- 
scribe the  qualities  of  the  refined  sculpture  which  is  executed 
in  large  quantities  for  private  persons  belonging  to  the  upper 
classes,  and  for  sepulchral  and  memorial  purposes.  But  I 
could  not  now  criticise  that  sculpture  with  any  power  of  con- 
viction to  you,  because  I have  not  yet  stated  to  you  the  prin- 
ciples of  good  sculpture  in  general.  I will,  however,  in  some 
points,  tell  you  the  facts  by  anticipation. 

58.  We  have  much  excellent  portrait  sculpture  ; but  portrait 
sculpture,  which  is  nothing  more,  is  always  third-rate  work, 
even  when  produced  by  men  of  genius  ; — nor  does  it  in  the 
least  require  men  of  genius  to  produce  it.  To  paint  a por- 
trait, indeed,  implies  the  very  highest  gifts  of  painting  ; but 
any  man,  of  ordinary  patience  and  artistic  feeling,  can  carve  a 
satisfactory  bust. 

59.  Of  our  powers  in  historical  sculpture,  I am,  without 
question,  just,  in  taking  for  sufficient  evidence  the  monuments 
we  have  erected  to  our  two  greatest  heroes  by  sea  and  land  ; 
namely,  the  Nelson  Column,  and  the  statue  of  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  opposite  Apsley  House.  Nor  will  you,  I hope, 
think  me  severe, — certainly,  whatever  you  may  think  me,  I 
am  using  only  the  most  temperate  language,  in  saying  of  both 
these  monuments,  that  they  are  absolutely  devoid  of  high 
sculptural  merit.  But,  consider  how  much  is  involved  in  the 
fact  thus  dispassionately  stated,  respecting  the  two  monu- 
ments in  the  principal  places  of  our  capital,  to  our  two  great- 
est heroes. 

60.  Bemember  that  we  have  before  our  eyes,  as  subjects  of 
perpetual  study  and  thought,  the  art  of  all  the  world  for  three 
thousand  years  past  : especially,  we  have  the  best  sculpture 
of  Greece,  for  example  of  bodily  perfection  ; the  best  of  Borne, 
for  example  of  character  in  portraiture  ; the  best  of  Florence, 


42 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


for  example  of  romantic  passion  : we  have  unlimited  access 
to  books  and  other  sources  of  instruction  ; we  have  the  most 
perfect  scientific  illustrations  of  anatomy,  both  human  and 
comparative  ; and,  we  have  bribes  for  the  reward  of  success, 
large,  in  the  proportion  of  at  least  twenty  to  one,  as  compared 
with  those  offered  to  the  artists  of  any  other  period.  And 
with  all  these  advantages,  and  the  stimulus  also  of  fame  car- 
ried instantly  by  the  press  to  the  remotest  corners  of  Europe, 
the  best  efforts  we  can  make,  on  the  grandest  of  occasions,  re- 
sult in  work  which  it  is  impossible  in  any  one  particular  to 
praise. 

Now  consider  for  yourselves  what  an  intensity  of  the  nega- 
tion of  the  faculty  of  sculpture  this  implies  in  the  national 
mind  ! What  measures  can  be  assigned  to  the  gulf  of  inca- 
pacity, which  can  deliberately  swallow  up  in  the  gorge  of  it 
the  teaching  and  example  of  three  thousand  years,  and  pro- 
duce as  the  result  of  that  instruction,  what  it  is  courteous  to 
call  “ nothing  ? ” 

61.  That  is  the  conclusion  at  which  we  arrive,  on  the  evi- 
dence presented  by  our  historical  sculpture.  To  complete  the 
measure  of  ourselves,  we  must  endeavour  to  estimate  the  rank 
of  the  two  opposite  schools  of  sculpture  employed  by  us  in 
the  nominal  service  of  religion,  and  in  the  actual  service  of 
vice. 

I am  aware  of  no  statue  of  Christ,  nor  of  any  apostle  of 
Christ,  nor  of  any  scene  related  in  the  New  Testament,  pro- 
duced by  us  within  the  last  three  hundred  years,  which  has 
possessed  even  superficial  merit  enough  to  attract  public  at- 
tention. 

Whereas  the  steadily  immoral  effect  of  the  formative  art 
which  we  learn,  more  or  less  apishly,  from  the  French  schools, 
and  employ,  but  too  gladly,  in  manufacturing  articles  for  the 
amusement  of  the  luxurious  classes,  must  be  ranked  as  one 
of  the  chief  instruments  used  by  joyful  fiends  and  angry  fates, 
for  the  ruin  of  our  civilization. 

If,  after  I have  set  before  you  the  nature  and  principles  of 
true  sculpture,  in  Athens,  Pisa,  and  Florence,  you  reconsider 
these  facts, — (which  you  will  then  at  once  recognize  as  such). 


IDOLATRY. 


43 


— you  will  find  that  they  absolutely  justify  my  assertion  that 
the  state  of  sculpture  in  modern  England,  as  compared  with 
that  of  the  great  Ancients,  is  literally  one  of  corrupt  and  dis- 
honourable death,  as  opposed  to  bright  and  fameful  life. 

G2.  And  now,  will  you  bear  with  me,  while  I tell  you  finally 
why  this  is  so  ? 

The  cause  with  which  you  are  personally  concerned  is  your 
own  frivolity  ; though  essentially  this  is  not  your  fault,  but 
that  of  the  system  of  your  early  training.  But  the  fact  re- 
mains the  same,  that  here,  in  Oxford,  you,  a chosen  body  of 
English  youth,  in  no  wise  care  for  the  history  of  your  coun- 
try, for  its  present  dangers,  or  its  present  duties.  You  still, 
like  children  of  seven  or  eight  years  old,  are  interested  only  in 
bats,  balls,  and  oars  : nay,  including  with  you  the  students  of 
Germany  and  France,  it  is  certain  that  the  general  body  of 
modern  European  youth  have  their  minds  occupied  more  seri- 
ously by  the  sculpture  and  painting  of  the  bowls  of  their 
tobacco-pipes,  than  by  all  the  divinest  workmanship  and  pas- 
sionate imagination  of  Greece,  Kome,  and  Mediaeval  Chris- 
tendom. 

63.  But  the  elementary  causes,  both  of  this  frivolity  in  you, 
and  of  worse  than  frivolity  in  older  persons,  are  the  two  forms 
of  deadly  Idolatry  which  are  now  all  but  universal  in  Eng- 
land. 

The  first  of  these  is  the  worship  of  the  Eidolon,  or  Phan- 
tasm of  Wealth  ; worship  of  which  you  will  find  the  nature 
partly  examined  in  the  37th  paragraph  of  my  Munera,  Pul - 
veris  ; but  which  is  briefly  to  be  defined  as  the  servile  appre- 
hension of  an  active  power  in  Money,  and  the  submission  to 
it  as  the  God  of  our  life. 

64.  The  second  elementary  cause  of  the  loss  of  our  nobly 
imaginative  faculty,  is  the  worship  of  the  Letter,  instead  of  the 
Spirit,  in  what  we  chiefly  accept  as  the  ordinance  and  teach- 
ing of  Deity  ; and  the  apprehension  of  a healing  sacredness  in 
the  act  of  reading  the  Book  whose  primal  commands  we  re- 
fuse to  obey. 

No  feather  idol  of  Polynesia  was  ever  a sign  of  a more 
shameful  idolatry,  than  the  modern  notion  in  the  minds  of 


44 


ABATE  A PENT  ELI  CL 


certainly  the  majority  of  English  religious  persons,  that  the 
Word  of  God,  by  which  the  heavens  were  of  old,  and  the 
earth,  standing  out  of  the  water  and  in  the  water, — the  Word 
of  God  which  came  to  the  prophets,  and  comes  still  for  ever  to 
all  who  will  hear  it,  (and  to  many  who  will  forbear)  ; and 
which,  called  Faithful  and  True,  is  to  lead  forth,  in  the  judg- 
ment, the  armies  of  heaven, — that  this  “ Word  of  God  ” may 
yet  be  bound  at  our  pleasure  in  morocco,  and  carried  about 
in  a young  lady’s  pocket,  with  tasselled  ribands  to  mark  the 
passages  she  most  approves  of. 

65.  Gentlemen,  there  has  hitherto  been  seen  no  instance, 
and  England  is  little  likely  to  give  the  unexampled  spectacle, 
of  a country  successful  in  the  noble  arts,  yet  in  which  the 
youths  were  frivolous,  the  maidens  falsety  religious,  the  men, 
slaves  of  money,  and  the  matrons,  of  vanity.  Not  from  all  the 
marble  of  the  hills  of  Luni  will  such  a people  ever  shape  one 
statue  that  may  stand  nobly  against  the  sky  ; not  from  all 
the  treasures  bequeathed  to  them  by  the  great  dead,  will  they 
gather,  for  their  own  descendants,  any  inheritance  but  shame. 


LECTURE  m. 

IMAGINATION. 

November , 1870. 

66.  The  principal  object  of  the  preceding  lecture  (and  I 
choose  rather  to  incur  your  blame  for  tediousness  in  repeat- 
ing, than  for  obscurity  in  defining  it),  was  to  enforce  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  ignoble  and  false  phase  of  Idolatry,  which 
consists  in  the  attribution  of  a spiritual  power  to  a material 
thing  ; and  the  noble  and  truth-seeking  phase  of  it,  to  which 
I shall  in  these  lectures  * give  the  general  term  of  Imagina- 

* I shall  be  obliged  in  future  lectures,  as  hitherto  in  my  other  writ- 
ings, to  use  the  terms,  Idolatry  and  Imagination  in  a more  comprehen- 
sive sense  ; but  here  I use  them  for  convenience  sake,  limitedly,  to 
avoid  the  continual  occurrence  of  the  terms,  noble  and  ignoble,  or  false 
and  true,  with  reference  to  modes  of  conception. 


IMAGINATION. 


45 


Fig.  2. 


IMAGINATION. 


47 


tion  ; — that  is  to  say,  the  invention  of  material  symbols  which 
may  lead  us  to  contemplate  the  character  and  nature  of  gods, 
spirits,  or  abstract  virtues  and  powers,  without  in  the  least 
implying  the  actual  presence  of  such  Beings  among  us,  or 
even  their  possession,  in  reality,  of  the  forms  we  attribute  to 
them. 

67.  For  instance,  in  the  ordinarily  received  Greek  type  of 
Athena,  on  vases  of  the  Phidian  time  (sufficiently  represented 
in  the  opposite  woodcut),  no  Greek  would  have  supposed  the 
vase  on  which  this  was  painted  to  be  itself  Athena,  nor  to  con- 
tain Athena  inside  of  it,  as  the  Arabian  fisherman’s  casket 
contained  the  genie  ; neither  did  he  think  that  this  rude 
black  painting,  done  at  speed  as  the  potter’s  fancy  urged  his 
hand,  represented  anything  like  the  form  or  aspect  of  the 
Goddess  herself.  Nor  would  he  have  thought  so,  even  had 
the  image  been  ever  so  beautifully  wrought.  The  goddess 
might,  indeed,  visibly  appear  under  the  form  of  an  armed 
virgin,  as  she  might  under  that  of  a hawk  or  a swallow,  when 
it  pleased  her  to  give  such  manifestation  of  her  presence  ; but 
it  did  not,  therefore,  follow  that  she  was  constantly  invested 
with  any  of  these  forms,  or  that  the  best  which  human  skill 
could,  even  by  her  own  aid,  picture  of  her,  was,  indeed,  a 
likeness  of  her.  The  real  use,  at  all  events,  of  this  rude 
image,  was  only  to  signify  to  the  eye  and  heart  the  facts  of 
the  existence,  in  some  manner,  of  a Spirit  of  wisdom,  perfect 
in  gentleness,  irresistible  in  anger  ; having  also  physical  do- 
minion over  the  air  which  is  the  life  and  breadth  of  all  creat- 
nres,  and  clothed,  to  human  eyes,  with  segis  of  fiery  cloud,  and 
raiment  of  falling  dew. 

68.  In  the  yet  more  abstract  conception  of  the  Spirit  of 
agriculture,  in  which  the  wings  of  the  chariot  represent  the 
winds  of  spring,  and  its  crested  dragons  are  originally  a mere 
type  of  the  seed  with  its  twisted  root  piercing  the  ground, 
and  sharp-edged  leaves  rising  above  it ; we  are  in  still  less 
danger  of  mistaking  the  symbol  for  the  presumed  form  of  an 
actual  Person.  But  I must,  with  persistence,  beg  of  you  to 
observe  that  in  all  the  noble  actions  of  imagination  in  this 
kind,  the  distinction  from  idolatry  consists,  not  in  the  denial  of 


48 


ARATRA  PENT  ELI  Cl. 


tlie  being,  or  presence  of  the  Spirit,  but  only  in  the  due  recog- 
nition of  our  human  incapacity  to  conceive  the  one,  or  compel 
the  other. 


Fig.  3. 

69.  Farther — -and  for  this  statement  1 claim  your  attention 
still  more  earnestly.  As  no  nation  lias  ever  attained  real 
greatness  during  periods  in  which  it  was  subject  to  any  condi- 
tion of  Idolatry,  so  no  nation  has  ever  attained  or  persevered 
in  greatness,  except  in  reaching  and  maintaining  a passionate 
Imagination  of  a spiritual  estate  higher  than  that  of  men  ; and 
of  spiritual  creatures  nobler  than  men,  having  a quite  real  and 
personal  existence,  however  imperfectly  apprehended  by  us. 


IMAGINATION. 


49 


And  all  the  arts  of  the  present  age  deserving  to  bo  included 
under  the  name  of  sculpture  have  been  degraded  by  us,  and 
all  principles  of  just  policy  have  vanished  from  us, — and  that 
totally, — for  this  double  reason  ; that  we  are  on  one  side,  given 
up  to  idolatries  of  the  most  servile  kind,  as  I showed  you  in 
the  close  of  the  last  lecture, — while,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have 
absolutely  ceased  from  the  exercise  of  faithful  imagination  ; 
and  the  only  remnants  of  the  desire  of  truth  which  remain  in 
us  have  been  corrupted  into  a prurient  itch  to  discover  the 
origin  of  life  in  the  nature  of  the  dust,  and  prove  that  the 
source  of  the  order  of  the  universe  is  the  accidental  concurrence 
of  its  atoms. 

70.  Under  these  two  calamities  of  our  time,  the  art  of  sculpt- 
ure has  perished  more  totally  than  any  other,  because  the 
object  of  that  art  is  exclusively  the  representation  of  form  as 
the  exponent  of  life.  It  is  essentially  concerned  only  with  the 
human  form,  which  is  the  exponent  of  the  highest  life  we 
know  ; and  with  all  subordinate  forms  only  as  they  exhibit 
conditions  of  vital  power  which  have  some  certain  relation  to 
humanity.  It  deals  with  the  “ particula  undique  desecta  ” of 
the  animal  nature,  and  itself  contemplates,  and  brings  forward 
for  its  disciples’  contemplation,  all  the  energies  of  creation 
which  transform  the  7^X0?,  or  lower  still,  the  /3op/>opoy  of  the 
trivia , by  Athena’s  help,  into  forms  of  power  ; — (to  /nlv  o\ov 
apyireVron'  auros  r/v.  awetpya^ero  Se  tol  i<al  rj  'AOrjva  ifiirveovcrcL 
tov  mrjXbv  Kal  e/xi^uya  Trocovaa  efvai  ra  7rA.a07xa.Ta  *)* — but  it  lias 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  representation  of  forms  not 
living,  however  beautiful,  (as  of  clouds  or  waves)  ; nor  may 
it  condescend  to  use  its  perfect  skill,  except  in  expressing  the 
noblest  conditions  of  life. 

These  laws  of  sculpture,  being  wholly  contrary  to  the  prac- 
tice of  our  day,  I cannot  expect  you  to  accept  on  my  assertion, 
nor  do  I wish  you  to  do  so.  By  placing  definitely  good  and 
bad  sculpture  before  you,  I do  not  doubt  but  that  I shall 

. * “ And  in  sum,  he  himself  (Prometheus)  was  the  master-maker,  and 
Athena  worked  together  with  him,  breathing  into  the  clay,  and  caused 
the  moulded  things  to  have  soul  (psyche)  in  them.5' — Lucian,  Prome- 
theus. 


4 


50 


ABATE  A BENT  ELI  CL 


gradually  prove  to  you  the  nature  of  all  excelling  and  endur- 
ing qualities  ; but  to-day  I will  only  confirm  my  assertions  by 
laying  before  you  the  statement  of  the  Greeks  themselves  on 
the  subject ; given  in  their  own  noblest  time,  and  assuredly 
authoritative,  in  every  point  which  it  embraces,  for  all  time 
to  come. 

71.  If  any  of  you  have  looked  at  the  explanation  I have 
given  of  the  myth  of  Athena  in  my  Queen  of  the  Air , you  can- 
not but  have  been  surprised  that  I took  scarcely  any  note  of 
the  story  of  her  birth.  I did  not,  because  that  story  is  con- 
nected intimately  with  the  Apolline  myths  ; and  is  told  of 
Athena,  not  essentially  as  the  goddess  of  the  air,  but  as  the 
goddess  of  Art- Wisdom. 

You  have  probably  often  smiled  at  the  legend  itself,  or 
avoided  thinking  of  it,  as  revolting.  It  is  indeed,  one  of  the 
most  painful  and  childish  of  sacred  myths  ; yet  remember, 
ludicrous  and  ugly  as  it  seems  to  us,  this  story  satisfied  the 
fancy  of  the  Athenian  people  in  their  highest  state  ; and  if  it 
did  not  satisfy — yet  it  was  accepted  by,  all  later  mythologists  : 
you  may  also  remember  I told  you  to  be  prepared  to  find  that, 
given  a certain  degree  of  national  intellect,  the  ruder  the 
symbol,  the  deeper  would  be  its  purpose.  And  this  legend 
of  the  birth  of  Athena  is  the  central  myth  of  all  that  the 
Greeks  have  left  us  respecting  the  power  of  their  arts  ; and  in 
it  they  have  expressed,  as  it  seemed  good  to  them,  the  most 
important  things  they  had  to  tell  us  on  these  matters.  We 
may  read  them  wrongly  ; but  we  must  read  them  here,  if 
anywhere. 

72.  There  are  so  many  threads  to  be  gathered  up  in  the 
legend,  that  I cannot  hope  to  put  it  before  you  in  total  clear- 
ness, but  I will  take  main  points.  Athena  is  born  in  the 
island  of  Ehodes  ; and  that  island  is  raised  out  of  the  sea  by 
Apollo,  after  he  had  been  left  without  inheritance  among  the 
gods.  Zeus  * would  have  cast  the  lot  again,  but  Apollo 

* His  relations  with  the  two  great  Titans,  Themis  and  Mnemosyne, 
belong  to  another  group  of  myths.  The  father  of  Athena  is  the  lower 
and  nearer  physical  Zeus,  from  whom  Metis,  the  mother  of  Athena,  long 
withdraws  and  disguises  herself. 


IMAGINATION. 


51 


orders  tlie  golden -girdled  Lachesis  to  stretch  out  her  hands  ; 
and  not  now  by  chance  or  lot,  but  by  noble  enchantment,  the 
island  rises  out  of  the  sea. 

Physically,  this  represents  the  action  of  heat  and  light  on 
chaos,  especially  on  the  deep  sea.  It  is  the  “ Fiat  lux  ” of 
Genesis,  the  first  process  in  the  conquest  of  Fate  by  Har- 
mony. The  island  is  dedicated  to  the  Nymph  Khodos,  by 
whom  Apollo  has  the  seven  sons  who  teach  crot/xorara  vorjfxaTa ; 
because  the  rose  is  the  most  beautiful  organism  existing  in 
matter  not  vital,  expressive  of  the  direct  action  of  light  on  the 
earth,  giving  lovely  form  and  colour  at  once  ; (compare  the  use 
of  it  by  Dante  as  the  form  of  the  sainted  crowd  in  highest 
heaven)  and  remember  that,  therefore,  the  rose  is  in  the  Greek 
mind,  essentially  a Doric  flower,  expressing  the  worship  of 
Light,  as  the  Iris  or  Ion  is  an  Ionic  one,  expressing  the  wor- 
ship of  the  Winds  and  Dew. 

73.  To  understand  the  agency  of  Hephcestus  at  the  birth  of 
Athena,  we  must  again  return  to  the  founding  of  the  arts  on 
agriculture  by  the  hand.  Before  you  can  cultivate  land  you 
must  clear  it ; and  the  characteristic  weapon  of  Hephaestus, — 
which  is  as  much  his  attribute  as  the  trident  is  of  Poseidon, 
and  the  rliabdos  of  Hermes,  is  not,  as  you  would  have  ex- 
pected, the  hammer,  but  the  clearing-axe — the  doubled-edged 
7 reAe/cvs,  the  same  that  Calypso  gives  Ulysses  with  which  to  cut 
down  the  trees  for  his  home  voyage  ; so  that  both  the  naval 
and  agricultural  strength  of  the  Athenians  are  expressed  by 
this  weapon,  with  which  they  had  to  hew  out  their  fortune. 
And  you  must  keep  in  mind  this  agriculturally  laborious 
character  of  Hephaestus,  even  when  he  is  most  distinctly  the 
god  of  serviceable  fire  ; thus  Horace’s  perfect  epithet  for  him 
“ avidus  ” expresses  at  once  the  devouring  eagerness  of  fire, 
and  the  zeal  of  progressive  labour,  for  Horace  gives  it  to  him 
when  he  is  fighting  against  the  giants.  And  this  rude  symbol 
of  his  cleaving  the  forehead  of  Zeus  with  the  axe,  and  giving 
birth  to  Athena  signifies,  indeed,  physically  the  thrilling 
power  of  heat  in  the  heavens,  rending  the  clouds,  and  giving 
birth  to  the  blue  air ; but  far  more  deeply  it  signifies  the  sub- 
duing of  adverse  Fate  by  true  labour  ; until,  out  of  the  chasm, 

LIBRARY 

v UNIVERSE 


OF  WJW 


AIUTB A TEN TE LIC I. 


52 

deft  by  resolute  and  industrious  fortitude,  springs  the  Spirit 
of  Wisdom. 

74.  Here  (Fig.  4)  is  an  early  drawing  of  the  myth,  to  which 
I shall  have  to  refer  afterwards  in  illustration  of  the  childish- 
ness of  the  Greek  mind  at  the  time  when  its  art-symbols 
were  first  fixed;  but  it  is  of  peculiar  value,  because  the  phys- 
ical character  of  Vulcan,  as  fire,  is  indicated  by  his  wearing 
the  ei/Spd/nSes  of  Hermes,  while  the  antagonism  of  Zeus,  as  the 
adverse  chaos,  either  of  cloud  or  of  fate,  is  shown  by  his 
striking  at  Hephaestus  with  his  thunderbolt.  But  Plate  IV. 
gives  you  (as  far  as  the  light  on  the  rounded  vase  will  allow 


Fig.  4. 

it  to  be  deciphered)  a characteristic  representation  of  the 
scene,  as  conceived  in  later  art. 

75.  I told  you  in  a former  lecture  of  this  course  that  the 
entire  Greek  intellect  was  in  a childish  phase  as  compared 
to  that  of  modern  times.  Observe,  however,  childishness 
does  not  necessarily  imply  universal  inferiority:  there  may 
be  a vigorous,  acute,  pure,  and  solemn  childhood,  and  there 
may  be  a weak,  foul,  and  ridiculous  condition  of  advanced 
life  ; but  the  one  is  still  essentially  the  childish,  and  the  other 
the  adult  phase  of  existence. 

76.  You  will  find,  then,  that  the  Greeks  were  the  first 
people  that  were  born  into  complete  humanity.  All  nations 
before  them  had  been,  and  all  around  them  still  were,  partly 


IMAGINATION. 


53 


savage,  bestial,  clay-encumbered,  inhuman ; still  semi-goat,  or 
semi-ant,  or  semi-stone,  or  semi-cloud.  But  the  power  of  a 
new  spirit  came  upon  the  Greeks,  and  the  stones  were  filled 
with  breath,  and  the  clouds  clothed  with  flesh  ; and  then 
came  the  great  spiritual  battle  between  the  Centaurs  and  Lap- 
ithre ; and  the  living  creatures  became  “Children  of  Men.” 
Taught,  yet  by  the  Centaur — sown,  as  they  knew,  in  the  fang 
— from  the  dappled  skin  of  the  brute,  from  the  leprous  scale 
of  the  serpent,  their  flesh  came  again  as  the  flesh  of  a little 
child,  and  they  were  clean. 

Fix  your  mind  on  this  as  the  very  central  character  of  the 
Greek  race — the  being  born  pure  and  human  out  of  the  bru- 
tal misery  of  the  past,  and  looking  abroad,  for  the  first  time, 
with  their  children’s  eyes,  wonderingly  open,  on  the  strange 
and  divine  world. 

77.  Make  some  effort  to  remember,  so  far  as  may  be  possi- 
ble to  you,  either  what  you  felt  in  yourselves  when  you  were 
young,  or  what  you  have  observed  in  other  children,  of  the 
action  of  thought  and  fancy.  Children  are  continually  repre- 
sented as  living  in  an  ideal  world  of  their  own.  So  far  as  I 
have  myself  observed,  the  distinctive  character  of  a child  is  to 
live  always  in  the  tangible  present,  having  little  pleasure  in 
memory,  and  being  utterly  impatient  and  tormented  by  antic- 
ipation : weak  alike  in  reflection  and  forethought,  but  having 
an  intense  possession  of  the  actual  present,  down  to  the  short- 
est moments  and  least  objects  of  it  ; possessing  it,  indeed,  so 
intensely  that  the  sweet  childish  days  are  as  long  as  twenty 
days  will  be  ; and  setting  all  the  faculties  of  heart  and  imag- 
ination on  little  things,  so  as  to  be  able  to  make  anything  out 
y)f  them  he  chooses.  Confined  to  a little  garden,  lie  does  not 
imagine  himself  somewhere  else,  but  makes  a great  garden 
out  of  that ; possessed  of  an  acorn-cup,  he  will  not  despise  it 
and  throw  it  away,  and  covet  a golden  one  in  its  stead  : it  is 
the  adult  who  does  so.  The  child  keeps  his  acorn-cup  as  a 
treasure,  and  makes  a golden  one  out  of  it  in  his  mind  ; so 
that  the  wondering  grown-up  person  standing  beside  him  is 
always  tempted  to  ask  concerning  his  treasures,  not,  “What 
would  you  have  more  than  these?”  but  “What  possibly  can 


54: 


ABATE  A PENT E LIC I. 


you  see  in  tliese  ? ” for,  to  tlie  bystander,  there  is  a ludicrous 
and  incomprehensible  inconsistency  between  the  child’s  words 
and  the  reality.  The  little  thing  tells  him  gravely,  holding 
up  the  acorn-cup,  that  “this  is  a queen’s  crown,  or  a fairy’s 
boat,”  and,  with  beautiful  effrontery,  expects  him  to  believe 
the  same.  But  observe — the  acorn-cup  must  be  there , and  in 
his  own  hand.  “Give  it  me  then  I will  make  more  of  it 
for  myself.  That  is  the  child’s  one  word,  always. 


Fig.  5.  * 

78.  It  is  also  the  one  word  of  the  Greek — “ Give  it  me.” 
Give  me  any  thing  definite  here  in  my  sight,  then  I will  make 
more  of  it. 

I cannot  easily  express  to  you  how  strange  it  seems  to  me 
that  I am  obliged,  here  in  Oxford,  to  take  the  position  of  an 
apologist  for  Greek  art  ; that  I find,  in  spite  of  all  the  devo- 
tion of  the  admirable  scholars  who  have  so  long  maintained 


IMAGINATION. 


55 


in  our  public  schools  the  authority  of  Greek  literature,  our 
younger  students  take  no  interest  in  the  manual  work  of  the 
people  upon  whose  thoughts  the  tone  of  their  early  intellect- 
ual life  has  exclusively  depended.  But  I am  not  surprised 
that  the  interest,  if  awakened,  should  not  at  first  take  the 
form  of  admiration.  The  inconsistency  between  an  Homeric 
description  of  a piece  of  furniture  or  armour,  and  the  actual 
rudeness  of  any  piece  of  art  approximating  within  even  three 
or  four  centuries,  to  the  Homeric  period,  is  so  great,  that  we 
at  first  cannot  recognize  the  art  as  elucidatory  of,  or  in  any 
way  related  to,  the  poetic  language. 

79.  You  will  find,  however,  exactly  the  same  kind  of  dis- 
crepancy between  early  sculpture,  and  the  languages  of  deed 
and  thought,  in  the  second  birth,  and  childhood,  of  the 
world,  under  Christianity.  The  same  fair  thoughts  and  bright 
imaginations  arise  again  ; and  similarly,  the  fancy  is  content 
with  the  rudest  symbols  by  which  they  can  be  formalized  to 
the  eyes.  You  cannot  understand  that  the  rigid  figure  (2) 
with  chequers  or  spots  on  its  breast,  and  sharp  lines  of 
drapery  to  its  feet,  could  represent,  to  the  Greek,  the  healing 
majesty  of  heaven  : but  can  you  any  better  understand  how  a 
symbol  so  haggard  as  this  (Fig.  5)  could  represent  to  the 
noblest  hearts  of  the  Christian  ages  the  power  and  ministra- 
tion of  angels  ? Yet  it  not  only  did  so,  but  retained  in  the 
rude  undulatory  and  linear  ornamentation  of  its  dress,  record 
of  the  thoughts  intended  to  be  conveyed  by  the  spotted  regis 
and  falling  chiton  of  Athena,  eighteen  hundred  years  before. 
Greek  and  Venetian  alike,  in  their  noble  childhood,  knew  with 
the  same  terror  the  coiling  wind  and  congealed  hail  in  heaven 
— saw  with  the  same  thankfulness  the  dew  shed  softly  on  the 
earth,  and  on  its  flowers  ; and  both  recognized,  ruling  these, 
and  symbolized  by  them,  the  great  helpf  ul  spirit  of  Wisdom, 
which  leads  the  children  of  men  to  all  knowledge,  all  courage, 
and  all  art. 

80.  Read  the  inscription  written  on  the  sarcophagus  (Plate 
V.),  at  the  extremity  of  which  this  angel  is  sculptured.  It 
stands  in  an  open  recess  in  the  rude  brick  wall  of  the  west 
front  of  the  church  of  St.  John  and  Paul  at  Venice,  being  the 


50 


ARATRA  PENTELICI. 


tomb  of  tlie  two  doges,  father  and  son,  Jacopo  and  Lorenzo 
Tiepolo.  This  is  the  inscription  : — 

1 ‘ Quos  natura  pares  studiis,  virtutibus,  arte 
Edidit,  illustres  genitor  natusque,  sepulti 
Hac  sub  rupe  Duces.  Venetum  charissima  proles 
Theupula  collatis  dedit  bos  celebranda  triumpbis. 

Omnia  presentis  donavit  predia  templi 
Dux  Jacobus  : valido  fixit  moderamine  leges 
Urbis,  et  ingratam  redimens  certamine  Jadram 
Dalmatiosque  dedit  patrie,  post,  Marte  subactas 
Graiorum  pelago  macula vit  sanguine  classes, 

Suscipit  oblatos  princeps  Laurentius  Istros, 

Et  domuit  rigidos,  ingenti  strage  cadentes, 

Bononie  populos.  Hinc  subdita  Cervia  cessit. 

Fundavere  vias  pacis  ; fortique  relicta 
Re,  superos  sacris  petierunt  mentibus  ambo. 

a Dominus  Jacbobus  bobiit  * M.CCLI.  Dominus  Laurentius  bobiit 

M.CCLXXVIII.” 

You  see,  therefore,  this  tomb  is  an  invaluable  example  of 
thirteenth  century  sculpture  in  Venice.  In  Plate  VI.,  you 
have  an  example  of  the  (coin)  sculpture  of  the  date  accurately 
corresponding  in  Greece  to  the  thirteenth  century  in  Venice, 
when  the  meaning  of  symbols  was  everything  and  the  work- 
manship comparatively  nothing.  The  upper  head  is  an  Athena, 
of  Athenian  work  in  the  seventh  or  sixth  century — (the  coin 
itself  may  have  been  struck  later,  but  the  archaic  type  was  re- 
tained). The  two  smaller  impressions  below  are  the  front  and 
obverse  of  a coin  of  the  same  age  from  Corinth,  the  head  of 
Athena  on  one  side,  and  Pegasus,  with  the  archaic  Koppa,  on 
the  other.  The  smaller  head  is  bare,  the  hair  being  looped 
up  at  the  back  and  closely  bound  with  an  olive  branch.  You 
are  to  note  this  general  outline  of  the  head,  already  given  in 
a more  finished  type  in  Plate  II.,  as  a most  important  element- 
ary form  in  the  finest  sculpture,  not  of  Greece  only,  but  of  all 
Christendom.  In  the  upper  head  the  hair  is  restrained  still 
more  closely  by  a round  helmet,  for  the  most  part  smooth, 

* Tbe  Latin  verses  are  of  later  date  ; the  contemporary  plain  prose  re' 
tains  tbe  Venetian  gutturals  and  aspirates. 


IMAGINATION. 


57 


but  embossed  with  a single  flower  tendril,  having  one  bud, 
one  flower,  and  above  it,  two  olive  leaves.  You  have  thus  the 
most  absolutely  restricted  symbol  possible  to  human  thought 
of  the  power  of  Athena  over  the  flowers  and  trees  of  the  earth. 
An  olive  leaf  by  itself  could  not  have  stood  for  the  sign  of  a 
tree,  but  the  two  can,  when  set  in  position  of  growth. 

I would  not  give  you  the  reverse  of  the  coin  on  the  same 
plate,  because  you  would  have  looked  at  it  only,  laughed  at  it, 
and  not  examined  the  rest  ; but  here  it  is,  wonderfully  en- 
graved for  you  (Fig.  6)  : of  it  we 
shall  have  more  to  say  afterwards. 

81.  And  now  as  you  look  at  these 
rude  vestiges  of  the  religion  of 
Greece,  and  at  the  vestiges,  still 
ruder,  on  the  Ducal  tomb,  of  the 
religion  of  Christendom,  take  warn- 
ing against  two  opposite  errors. 

There  is  a school  of  teachers  who 
will  tell  you  that  nothing  but  Greek 
art  is  deserving  of  study,  and  thnt 
all  our  work  at  this  day  should  be  an  imitation  of  it. 

Whenever  you  feel  tempted  to  believe  them,  think  of  these 
portraits  of  Athena  and  her  owl,  and  be  assured  that  Greek 
art  is  not  in  all  respects  perfect,  nor  exclusively  deserving  of 
imitation. 

There  is  another  school  of  teachers-  who  wall  tell  you  that 
Greek  art  is  good  for  nothing  ; that  the  soul  of  the  Greek  was 
outcast,  and  that  Christianity  entirely  superseded  its  faith, 
and  excelled  its  works. 

Whenever  you  feel  tempted  to  believe  them,  think  of  this 
angel  on  the  tomb  of  Jacopo  Tiepolo  ; and  remember,  that 
Cli ristiani ty,  after  it  had  been  twelve  hundred  years  existent 
as  an  imaginative  power  on  the  earth,  could  do  no  better*  work 
than  this,  though  with  all  the  former  power  of  Greece  to  help 
it ; nor  was  able  to  engrave  its  triumph  in  having  stained  its 
fleets  in  the  seas  of  Greece  with  the  blood  of  her  people,  but 
between  barbarous  imitations  of  the  pillars  which  that  people 
had  invented. 


58 


ARATRA  PENTEL1CI. 


82.  Receiving  these  two  warnings,  receive  also  this  lesson. 
In  both  examples,  childish  though  it  be,  this  Heathen  and 
Christian  art  is  alike  sincere,  and  alike  vividly  imaginative  : 
the  actual  work  is  that  of  infancy  ; the  thoughts,  in  their  vi- 
sionary simplicity,  are  also  the  thoughts  of  infancy,  but  in 
their  solemn  virtue,  they  are  the  thoughts  of  men. 

We,  on  the  contrary,  are  now,  in  all  that  we  do,  absolutely 
without  sincerity  ; — absolutely,  therefore,  without  imagina- 
tion, and  without  virtue.  Our  hands  are  dexterous  with  the 
vile  and  deadly  dexterity  of  machines ; our  minds  filled  with 
incoherent  fragments  of  faith,  which  we  cling  to  in  coward- 
ice, without  believing,  and  make  pictures  of  in  vanity,  with- 
out loving.  False  and  base  alike,  whether  we  admire  or  imi- 
tate, we  cannot  learn  from  the  Heathen’s  art,  but  only  pilfer 
it ; we  cannot  revive  the  Christian’s  art,  but  only  galvanize  it ; 
we  are,  in  the  sum  of  us,  not  human  artists  at  all,  but  mechan- 
isms of  conceited  clay,  masked  in  the  furs  and  feathers  of  liv- 
ing creatures,  and  convulsed  with  voltaic  spasms,  in  mockery 
of  animation. 

83.  You  think,  perhaps,  that  I am  using  terms  unjustifiable 
in  violence.  They  would,  indeed,  be  unjustifiable,  if,  spoken 
from  this  chair,  they  were  violent  at  all.  They  are,  unhap- 
pily, temperate  and  accurate, — except  in  shortcoming  of  blame. 
For  we  are  not  only  impotent  to  restore,  but  strong  to  defile, 
the  work  of  past  ages.  Of  the  impotence,  take  but  this  one, 
utterly  liumiliatory,  and,  in  the  full  meaning  of  it,  ghastly, 
example.  We  have  lately  been  busy  embanking,  in  the  cap- 
ital of  the  country,  the  river  which,  of  all  its  waters,  the  im- 
agination of  our  ancestors  had  made  most  sacred,  and  the 
bounty  of  nature  most  useful.  Of  all  architectural  features  of 
the  metropolis,  that  embankment  will  be,  in  future,  the  most 
conspicuous  ; and  in  its  position  and  purpose  it  wras  the  most 
capable  of  noble  adornment. 

For  that  adornment,  nevertheless,  the  utmost  which  our 
modern  poetical  imagination  has  been  able  to  invent,  is  a row 
of  gas-lamps.  It  has,  indeed,  farther  suggested  itself  to  our 
minds  as  appropriate  to  gas-lamps  set  beside  a river,  that  the 
gas  should  come  out  of  fishes’  tails  ; but  we  have  not  ingenuity 


IMAGINATION. 


59 


enough  to  cast  so  much  as  a smelt  or  a sprat  for  ourselves ; 
so  we  borrow  the  shape  of  a Neapolitan  marble,  which  has 
been  the  refuse  of  the  plate  and  candlestick  shops  in  every 
capital  of  Europe  for  the  last  fifty  years.  We  cast  that  badly, 
and  give  lustre  to  the  ill-cast  fish  with  lacquer  in  imitation  of 
bronze.  On  the  base  of  their  pedestals,  towards  the  road, 
we  put  for  advertisement’s  sake,  the  initials  of  the  casting 
firm  ; and,  for  farther  originality  and  Christianity’s  sake,  the 
caduceus  of  Mercury ; and  to  adorn  the  front  of  the  pedestals 
towards  the  river,  being  now  wholly  at  our  wit’s  end,  we 
can  think  of  nothing  better  than  to  borrow  the  door-knocker 
wrhich — again  for  the  last  fifty  years — has  disturbed  and  dec- 
orated two  or  three  millions  of  London  street-doors ; and 
magnifying  the  marvellous  device  of  it,  a lion’s  head  wdth  a 
ring  in  its  mouth  (still  borrowed  from  the  Greek),  we  complete 
the  embankment  with  a row  of  heads  and  rings,  on  a scale 
which  enables  them  to  produce,  at  the  distance  at  which  only 
they  can  be  seen,  the  exact  effect  of  a row  of  sentrvboxes. 

84.  Farther.  In  the  very  centre  of  the  city,  and  at  the 
point  where  the  Embankment  commands  a view  of  Westmin- 
ster Abbey  on  one  side  and  of  St.  Paul’s  on  the  other — that  is 
to  say,  at  precisely  the  most  important  and  stately  moment 
of  its  whole  course — it  has  to  pass  under  one  of  the  arches  of 
Waterloo  Bridge,  which,  in  the  sweep  of  its  curve,  is  as  vast 
— it  alone — as  the  Bialto  at  Venice,  and  scarcely  less  seemly 
in  proportions.  But  over  the  Rialto,  though  of  late  and  de- 
based Venetian  work,  there  still  reigns  some  power  of  human 
imagination  : on  the  two  flanks  of  it  are  carved  the  Virgin 
and  the  Angel  of  the  Annunciation  ; on  the  keystone  the  de- 
scending Dove.  It  is  not,  indeed,  the  fault  of  living  designers 
that  the  Waterloo  arch  is  nothing  more  than  a gloomy  and 
hollow  heap  of  wedged  blocks  of  blind  granite.  But  just 
beyond  the  damp  shadow  of  it,  the  new  Embankment  is 
reached  by  a flight  of  stairs,  which  are,  in  point  of  fact,  the 
principal  approach  to  it,  a-foot,  from  central  London  ; the  de- 
scent from  the  very  midst  of  the  metropolis  of  England  to 
the  banks  of  the  chief  river  of  England  ; and  for  this  ap* 
proach,  living  designers  are  answerable. 


GO 


AH  ATE  A PENT E LIC I. 


85.  The  principal  decoration  of  the  descent  is  again  a gas- 
lamp,  but  a shattered  one,  with  a brass  crown  on  the  top  of 
it  or,  rather,  half-crown,  and  that  turned  the  wrong  way,  the 
back  of  it  to  the  river  and  causeway,  its  flame  supplied  by  a 
visible  pipe  far  wandering  along  the  wall ; the  whole  appa- 
ratus being  supported  by  a rough  cross-beam.  Fastened  to 
the  centre  of  the  arch  above  is  a large  placard,  stating  that 
the  Royal  Humane  Society’s  drags  are  in  constant  readiness, 
and  that  their  office  is  at  4,  Trafalgar  Square.  On  each  side 
of  the  arch  are  temporary,  but  dismally  old  and  battered 
boardings,  across  two  angles  capable  of  unseemly  use  by  the 
British  public.  Above  one  of  these  is  another  placard,  stat- 
ing that  this  is  the  Victoria  Embankment.  The  steps  them- 
selves— some  forty  of  them — descend  under  a tunnel,  which 
the  shattered  gas-lamp  lights  by  night,  and  nothing  by  day. 
They  are  covered  with  filthy  dust,  shaken  off  from  infinitude 
of  filthy  feet  ; mixed  up  with  shreds  of  paper,  orange-peel, 
foul  straw,  rags,  and  cigar  ends,  and  ashes  ; the  whole  agglu- 
tinated, more  or  less,  by  dry  saliva  into  slippery  blotches  and 
patches  ; or,  when  not  so  fastened,  blown  dismally  by  the 
sooty  wind  hither  and  thither,  or  into  the  faces  of  those  who 
ascend  and  descend.  The  place  is  worth  your  visit,  for  you 
are  not  likely  to  find  elsewhere  a spot  which,  either  in  costly 
and  ponderous  brutality  of  building,  or  in  the  squalid  and 
indecent  accompaniment  of  it,  is  so  far  separated  from  the 
peace  and  grace  of  nature,  and  so  accurately  indicative  of  the 
methods  of  our  national  resistance  to  the  Grace,  Mercy,  and 
Peace  of  Heaven. 

86.  I am  obliged  always  to  use  the  English  word  “ Grace  ” 
in  two  senses,  but  remember  that  the  Greek  yapis  includes 
them  both  (the  bestowing,  that  is  to  say  of  Beauty  and 
Mercy)  ; and  especially  it  includes  these  in  the  passage  of 
Pindar’s  first  ode,  which  gives  us  the  key  to  the  right  inter- 
pretation of  the  power  of  sculpture  in  Greece.  You  remem- 
ber that  I told  you,  in  my  Sixth  Introductory  Lecture  (§  151), 
that  the  mythic  accounts  of  Greek  sculpture  begin  in  the 
legends  of  the  family  of  Tantalus  ; and  especially  in  the  most 
grotesque  legend  of  them  all,  the  inlaying  of  the  ivory  shoul- 


IMAGINATION.  Cl 

der  of  Pelops.  At  that  story  Pindar  pauses — not,  indeed, 
without  admiration,  nor  alleging  any  impossibility  in  the  cir- 
cumstances themselves,  but  doubting  the  careless  hunger  of 
Demeter — and  gives  his  own  reading  of  the  event,  instead  of 
the  ancient  one.  He  justifies  this  to  himself,  and  to  his  hear- 
ers, by  the  plea  that  myths  have,  in  some  sort,  or  degree, 
(7 tov  tl),  led  the  mind  of  mortals  beyond  the  truth  : and  then 
he  goes  on  : — 

Cb  Grace,  which  creates  everything  that  is  kindly  and  sooth- 
ing for  mortals,  adding  honour,  has  often  made  things  at  first 
untrustworthy,  become  trustworthy  through  Love.” 

87.  I cannot,  except  in  these  lengthened  terms,  give  }tou 
the  complete  force  of  the  passage  ; especially  of  the  amo-rov 
IfjLrjcraro  Tua-Tov — “ made  it  trustworthy  by  passionate  desire 
that  it  should  be  so  ” — which  exactly  describes  the  temper  of 
religious  persons  at  the  present  day,  who  are  kindly  and  sin- 
cere, in  clinging  to  the  forms  of  faith  which  either  have  long 
been  precious  to  themselves,  or  which  they  feel  to  have  been 
without  question  instrumental  in  advancing  the  dignity  of 
mankind.  And  it  is  part  of  the  constitution  of  humanity — a 
part  which,  above  others,  you  are  in  danger  of  unwisely  con- 
temning under  the  existing  conditions  of  our  knowledge,  that 
the  things  thus  sought  for  belief  with  eager  passion,  do, 
indeed,  become  trustworthy  to  us  ; that,  to  each  of  us,  they 
verily  become  what  we  would  have  them  ; the  force  of  the 
fjLrjvis  and  ixvrjfir]  with  which  we  seek  after  them,  does,  indeed, 
make  them  powerful  to  us  for  actual  good  or  evil ; and  if  is 
thus  granted  to  us  to  create  not  only  with  our  hands  v things 
that  exalt  or  degrade  our  sight,  but  with  our  hearts  also, 
things  that  exalt  or  degrade  our  souls  ; giving  true  substance 
to  all  that  we  hoped  for  ; evidence  to  things  that  we  have  not 
seen,  but  have  desired  to  see ; and  calling,  in  the  sense  of 
creating,  things  that  are  not,  as  though  they  were. 

88.  You  remember  that  in  distinguishing  Imagination  from 
Idolatry,  I referred  you  to  the  forms  of  passionate  affection 
with  which  a noble  people  commonly  regards  the  rivers  and 
springs  of  its  native  land.  Some  conception  of  personality 
or  of  spiritual  power  in  the  stream,  is  almost  necessarily  iir 


62 


AllA  TEA  PEN  TELA  CL 


volved  in  such  emotion ; and  prolonged  ya/ns  in  the  form  of 
gratitude,  the  return  of  Love  for  benefits  continually  bestowed, 
at  last  alike  in  all  the  highest  and  the  simplest  minds,  when 
they  are  honourable  and  pure,  makes  this  untrue  thing  trust' 
worthy  ; a-mo-rov  ifLrjarcLTo  maTov , until  it  becomes  to  them  the 
safe  basis  of  some  of  the  happiest  impulses  of  their  moral 
nature.  Next  to  the  marbles  of  Verona,  given  you  as  a primal 
type  of  the  sculpture  of  Christianity,  moved  to  its  best  energy 
in  adorning  the  entrance  of  its  temples,  I have  not  unwillingly 
placed,  as  your  introduction  to  the  best  sculpture  of  the  re- 
ligion of  Greece,  the  forms  under  which  it  represented  the 
personality  of  the  fountain  Arethusa.  But,  without  restriction 
to  those  days  of  absolute  devotion,  let  me  simply  point  out  to 
you  how  this  untrue  thing,  made  true  by  Love,  has  intimate 
and  heavenly  authority  even  over  the  minds  of  men  of  the 
most  practical  sense,  the  most  shrewd  wit,  and  the  most 
severe  precision  of  moral  temper.  The  fair  vision  of  Sabrina 
in  Com  us,  the  endearing  and  tender  promise,  “ Fies  nobilium 
tu  quoque  fontium,”  and  the  joyful  and  proud  affection  of  the 
great  Lombard’s  address  to  the  lakes  of  his  enchanted  land, — 

Te,  Lari  maxume,  teque 
Fluctibus  et  fremitu  assurgens,  Benace,  marino, 

may  surely  be  remembered  by  you  with  regretful  piety,  when 
you  stand  by  the  blank  stones  which  at  once  restrain  and  dis- 
grace your  native  river,  as  the  final  worship  rendered  to  it  by 
modern  philosophy.  But  a little  incident  which  I saw  last 
summer  on  its  bridge  at  Wallingford,  may  put  the  contrast  of 
ancient  and  modern  feeling  before  you  still  more  forcibty. 

89.  Those  of  you  who  have  read  with  attention  (none  of 
us  can  read  with  too  much  attention),  Moliere’s  most  perfect 
work,  the  Misanthrope , must  remember  Celimene’s  description 
of  her  lovers,  and  her  excellent  reason  for  being  unable  to  re- 
gard with  any  favour,  “ notre  grand  flandrin  de  vicomte, — 
depuis  que  je  l’ai  vu,  trois  quarts  d’heure  durant,  craclier  dans 
un  puits  pour  faire  des  ronds.”  That  sentence  is  worth  noting, 
both  in  contrast  to  the  reverence  paid  by  the  ancients  to  wells 
and  springs,  and  as  one  of  the  most  interesting  traces  of  the 


IMAGINATION. 


G3 


extension  of  the  loathsome  habit  among  the  upper  classes  of 
Europe  and  America,  which  now  renders  all  external  grace, 
dignity,  and  decency,  impossible  in  the  thoroughfares  of  their 
principal  cities.  In  connection  wish  that  sentence  of  Moliere’s 
you  may  advisably  also  remember  this  fact,  which  I chanced 
to  notice  on  the  bridge  of  Wallingford.  I was  walking  from 
end  to  end  of  it,  and  back  again,  one  Sunday  afternoon  of  last 
May,  trying  to  conjecture  what  had  made  this  especial  bend 
and  ford  of  the  Thames  so  important  in  all  the  Anglo-Saxon 
wars.  It  was  one  of  the  few  sunny  afternoons  of  the  bitter 
spring,  and  I was  very  thankful  for  its  light,  and  happy  in 
watching  beneath  it  the  flow  and  the  glittering  of  the  classical 
river,  when  I noticed  a well-dressed  boy,  apparently  just  out 
of  some  orderly  Sunday-school,  leaning  far  over  the  parapet ; 
watching,  as  I conjectured,  some  bird  or  insect  on  the  bridge- 
buttress.  I went  up  to  him  to  see  what  he  was  looking  at ; 
but  just  as  I got  close  to  him,  he  started  over  to  the  opposite 
parapet,  and  put  himself  there  into  the  same  position,  his  ob- 
ject being,  as  I then  perceived,  to  spit  from  both  sides  upon 
the  heads  of  a pleasure  party  who  were  passing  in  a boat 
below. 

90.  The  incident  may  seem  to  you  too  trivial  to  be  noticed 
in  this  place.  To  me,  gentlemen,  it  was  by  no  means  trivial. 
It  meant,  in  the  depth  of  it,  such  absence  of  all  true  xapis, 
reverence,  and  intellect,  as  it  is  very  dreadful  to  trace  in  the 
mind  of  any  human  creature,  much  more  in  that  of  a child 
educated  with  apparently  every  advantage  of  circumstance  in 
a beautiful  English  country  town,  within  ten  miles  of  our 
University.  Most  of  all,  is  it  terrific  when  we  regard  it  as  the 
exponent  (and  this,  in  truth,  it  is),  of  the  temper  which,  as 
distinguished  from  former  methods,  either  of  discipline  or 
recreation,  the  present  tenor  of  our  general  teaching  fosters 
in  the  mind  of  youth  ; — teaching  which  asserts  liberty  to  be  a 
right,  and  obedience  a degradation  ; and  which,  regardless 
alike  of  the  fairness  of  nature  and  the  grace  of  behaviour, 
leaves  the  insolent  spirit  and  degraded  senses  to  find  their 
only  occupation  in  malice,  and  their  only  satisfaction  in 
shame. 


64 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


91.  You  will,  I hope,  proceed  with  me,  not  scornfully  any 
more,  to  trace,  in  the  early  art  of  a noble  heathen  nation,  the 
feeling  of  what  was  at  least  a better  childishness  than  this  of 
ours  ; and  the  efforts  to  express,  though  with  hands  yet  fail- 
ing, and  minds  oppressed  by  ignorant  phantasy,  the  first  truth 
by  which  they  knew  that  they  lived  ; the  birth  of  wisdom  and 
of  all  her  powers  of  help  to  man,  as  the  reward  of  his  resolute 
labour. 

92.  “'AcfxxLcrTov  Texvcuo-L.”  Note  that  word  of  Pindar  in  the 
Seventh  Olympic.  This  axe-blow  of  Vulcan’s  was  to  the 
Greek  mind  truly  what  Clytemnestra  falsely  asserts  hers  to 
have  been  “ttJs  Sc  Sc£lgls  xeP°q>  Zpyov,  Strata?  tcktovos”  ; physi- 
cally, it  meant  the  opening  of  the  blue  through  the  rent  clouds 
of  heaven,  by  the  action  of  local  terrestrial  heat  (of  Hephaestus 
as  opposed  to  Apollo,  who  shines  on  the  surface  of  the  upper 
clouds,  but  cannot  pierce  them  ; and,  spiritually,  it  meant  the 
first  birth  of  prudent  thought  out  of  rude  labour,  the  clear- 
ing-axe in  the  hand  of  the  woodman  being  the  practical  ele- 
mentary sign  of  his  difference  from  the  wild  animals  of  the 
wood.  Then  he  goes  on,  “ From  the  high  head  of  her  Father, 
Athenaia  rushing  forth,  cried  with  her  great  and  exceeding 
cry  ; and  the  Heaven  trembled  at  her,  and  the  Earth  Mother.” 
The  cry  of  Athena,  I have  before  pointed  out,  physically  dis- 
tinguishes her,  as  the  spirit  of  the  air,  from  silent  elemental 
powers  ; but  in  this  grand  passage  of  Pindar  it  is  again  the 
mythic  cry  of  which  he  thinks  ; that  is  to  say,  the  giving 
articulate  words,  by  intelligence,  to  the  silence  of  Fate. 
“ Wisdom  crieth  aloud,  she  uttereth  her  voice  in  the  streets,” 
and  Heaven  and  Earth  tremble  at  her  reproof. 

93.  Uttereth  her  voice  in  “the  streets.”  For  all  men,  that 
is  to  say ; but  to  what  work  did  the  Greeks  think  that  her 
voice  was  to  call  them  ? What  was  to  be  the  impulse  com- 
municated by  her  prevailing  presence  ; what  the  sign  of  the 
people’s  obedience  to  her  ? 

This  was  to  be  the  sign — “But  she,  the  goddess  herself, 
gave  to  them  to  prevail  over  the  dwellers  upon  earth,  with 
best-labouring  hands  in  every  art.  And  by  their  paths  there  were 
the  likenesses  of  living  and  of  creeping  things  ; and  the  glory 


IMAGINATION . 


65 


was  deep.  For  to  the  cunning  workman,  greater  knowledge 
comes,  undeceitful.” 

94.  An  infinitely  pregnant  passage,  this,  of  which  to-day 
you  are  to  note  mainly  these  three  things  : First,  that  Athena 
is  the  goddess  of  Doing,  not  at  all  of  sentimental  inaction. 
She  is  begotten,  as  it  were,  of  the  woodman’s  axe  ; her  purpose 
is  never  in  a word  only,  but  in  a word  and  a blow.  She  guides 
the  hands  that  labour  best,  in  every  art. 

95.  Secondly.  The  victory  given  by  Wisdom,  the  worker,  to 
the  hands  that  labour  best,  is  that  the  streets  and  ways,  KtkevOoi, 
shall  be  filled  by  likenesses  of  living  and  creeping  things  ? 

Things  living,  and  creeping  ! Are  the  Reptile  things  not 
alive  then?  You  think  Pindar  wrote  that  carelessly?  or  that, 
if  he  had  only  known  a little  modern  anatomy,  instead  of 
“ reptile  ” things,  he  would  have  said  “ monochondylous  ” 
things  ? Be  patient,  and  let  us  attend  to  the  main  points 
first. 

Sculpture,  it  thus  appears,  is  the  only  work  of  wisdom  that 
the  Greeks  care  to  speak  of  ; they  think  it  involves  and  crowns 
every  other.  Image-making  art ; this  is  Athena’s,  as  queen- 
liest  of  the  arts.  Literature,  the  order  and  the  strength  of 
word,  of  course  belongs  to  Apollo  and  the  Muses  ; under 
Athena  are  the  Substances  and  the  Forms  of  things. 

96.  Thirdly.  By  this  forming  of  Images  there  is  to  be 
gained  a “ deep  ” — that  is  to  say — a weighty,  and  prevailing, 
glory  ; not  a floating  nor  fugitive  one.  For  to  the  cunning 
workman,  greater  knowledge  comes,  “ undeceitful.” 

“ AaeVrr  ” I am  forced  to  use  two  English  words  to  trans- 
late that  single  Greek  one.  The  “cunning”  workman, 
thoughtful  in  experience,  touch,  and  vision  of  the  thing  to  be 
done  ; no  machine,  witless,  and  of  necessary  motion  ; yet  not 
cunning  only,  but  having  perfect  habitual  skill  of  hand  also  ; 
the  confirmed  reward  of  truthful  doing.  Recollect,  in  con- 
nection with  this  passage  of  Pindar,  Homer’s  three  verses 
about  getting  the  lines  of  ship-timber  true,  (//.  xv.  410) 

“ ’AAA.’  cocrre  ( fraO/ir]  dopv  vifiov  e^iOvvei 

T6Ktovos  ev  TvaXafAricn  Sari/iovos,  os  pa  re  Traces 
ev  eidy  (Totplrjs , vTToQr);j.o<Tvvy(Tiv  *A Orfi/rjSy” 

5 


66 


ARATRA  PENTEL1CI. 


and  the  beautiful  epithet  of  Persephone,  “ Saci pa”  as  the 
Tryer  and  Knower  of  good  work  ; and  remembering  these, 
trust  Pindar  for  the  truth  of  his  saying,  that  to  the  cunning 
workman — (and  let  me  solemnly  enforce  the  words  by  adding 
— that  to  him  only,)  knowledge  comes  undeceitful. 

97.  You  may  have  noticed,  perhaps,  and  with  a smile,  as 
one  of  the  paradoxes  you  often  hear  me  blamed  for  too  fondly 
stating,  what  I told  you  in  the  close  of  my  Third  Introductory 
Lecture,  that  “so  far  from  art’s  being  immoral,  little  else  ex- 
cept art  is  moral.”  I have  now  farther  to  tell  you,  that  little 
else,  except  art,  is  wise  ; that  all  knowledge,  unaccompanied 
by  a habit  of  4iseful  action,  is  too  likely  to  become  deceitful, 
and  that  every  habit  of  useful  action  must  resolve  itself  into 
some  elementary  practice  of  manual  labour.  And  I would,  in 
all  sober  and  direct  earnestness  advise  you,  whatever  may  be 
the  aim,  predilection,  or  necessity  of  your  lives,  to  resolve 
upon  this  one  thing  at  least,  that  you  will  enable  yourselves 
daily  to  do  actually  with  your  hands,  something  that  is  useful 
to  mankind.  To  do  anything  well  with  your  hands,  useful 
or  not  ; — to  be,  even  in  trifling,  7ra\a pyai  8a rj/juov,  is  already 
much  ; — when  we  come  to  examine  the  art  of  the  middle  ages 
I shall  be  able  to  show  you  that  the  strongest  of  all  influences 
of  right  then  brought  to  bear  upon  character  was  the  neces- 
sity for  exquisite  manual  dexterity  in  the  management  of  the 
spear  and  bridle  ; and  in  your  own  experience  most  of  you 
will  be  able  to  recognize  the  wholesome  effect,  alike  on  body 
and  mind,  of  striving,  within  proper  limits  of  time,  to  become 
either  good  batsmen,  or  good  oarsmen.  But  the  bat  and  the 
racer’s  oar  are  children’s  toys.  Resolve  that  you  will  be  men 
in  usefulness,  as  well  as  in  strength  ; and  you  will  find  that 
then  also,  but  not  till  then,  you  can  become  men  in  under- 
standing ; and  that  every  fine  vision  and  subtle  theorem  will 
present  itself  to  you  thenceforward  undeceitfully,  vTro6r]fio(Tvvrj(jiv 
A 6rjvr]^. 

98.  But  there  is  more  to  be  gathered  yet  from  the  words  of 
Pindar.  He  is  thinking,  in  his  brief,  intense  way,  at  once  of 
Athena’s  work  on  the  soul,  and  of  her  literal  power  on  the 
dust  of  the  Earth.  His  “ KekevOoc  ” is  a wide  word  meaning  all 


IMAGINATION. 


07 


the  paths  of  sea  and  land.  Consider,  therefore,  what  Athena’s 
own  work  actually  is — in  the  literal  fact  of  it.  The  blue,  clear 
air  is  the  sculpturing  power  upon  the  earth  and  sea.  Where 
the  surface  of  the  earth  is  reached  by  that,  and  its  matter  and 
substance  inspired  with,  and  filled  by  that,  organic  form  be- 
comes possible.  You  must  indeed  have  the  sun,  also,  and 
moisture  ; the  kingdom  of  Apollo  risen  out  of  the  sea : but 
the  sculpturing  of  living  things,  shape  by  shape,  is  Athena’s, 
so  that  under  the  brooding  spirit  of  the  air,  what  was  without 
form,  and  void  brings  forth  the  moving  creature  that  hath 
life. 

99.  That  is  her  work  then — the  giving  of  Form  ; then  the 
separately  Apolline  work  is  the  giving  of  Light ; or,  more 
strictly,  Sight : giving  that  faculty  to  the  retina  to  which  we 
owe  not  merely  the  idea  of  light,  but  the  existence  of  it ; for 
light  is  to  be  defined  only  as  the  sensation  produced  in  the  eye 
of  an  animal,  under  given  conditions  ; those  same  conditions 
being,  to  a stone,  only  warmth  or  chemical  influence,  but  not 
light.  And  that  power  of  seeing,  and  the  other  various  per- 
sonalities and  authorities  of  the  animal  body,  in  pleasure  and 
pain,  have  never,  hitherto,  been,  I do  not  say,  explained,  but 
in  any  wise  touched  or  approached  by  scientific  discovery. 
Some  of  the  conditions  of  mere  external  animal  form  and  of 
muscular  vitality  have  been  shown  ; but  for  the  most  part  that 
is  true,  even  of  external  form,  which  I wrote  six  years  ago. 
“ You  may  always  stand  by  Form  against  Force.  To  a painter, 
the  essential  character  of  anything  is  the  form  of  it,  and  the 
philosophers  cannot  touch  that.  They  come  and  tell  you,  for 
instance,  that  there  is  as  much  heat,  or  motion,  or  calorific 
energy  (or  whatever  else  they  like  to  call  it),  in  a tea-kettle,  as 
in  a gier-eagle.  Very  good  : that  is  so  ; and  it  is  very  inter- 
esting. It  requires  just  as  much  heat  as  will  boil  the  kettle, 
to  take  the  gier-eagle  up  to  his  nest,  and  as  much  more  to 
bring  him  down  again  on  a hare  or  a partridge.  But  we 
painters,  acknowledging  the  equality  and  similarity  of  the 
kettle  and  the  bird  in  all  scientific  respects,  attach,  for  our 
part,  our  principal  interest  to  the  difference  in  their  forms. 
For  us,  the  primarily  cognisable  facts,  in  the  two  things,  are, 


63 


ABATE  A BENT  ELI  CL 


that  the  kettle  has  a spout,  and  the  eagle  a beak ; the  one  a 
lid  on  its  back,  the  other  a pair  of  wings ; not  to  speak  of  the 
distinction  also  of  volition,  which  the  philosophers  may  prop- 
erly call  merely  a form  or  mode  of  force  — but,  then  to  an  art- 
ist, the  form  or  mode  is  the  gist  of  the  business.  ” 

100.  As  you  will  find  that  it  is,  not  to  the  artist  only,  but 
to  all  of  us.  The  laws  under  which  matter  is  collected  and 
constructed  are  the  same  throughout  the  universe  : the  sub- 
stance so  collected,  whether  for  the  making  of  the  eagle,  or 
the  worm,  may  be  analyzed  into  gaseous  identity  ; a diffusive 
vital  force,  apparently  so  closely  related  to  mechanically  meas- 
urable heat  as  to  admit  the  conception  of  its  being  itself  me- 
chanically measurable,  and  unchanging  in  total  quantity,  ebbs 
and  flows  alike  through  the  limbs  of  men,  and  the  fibres  of 
insects.  But,  above  all  this,  and  ruling  every  grotesque  or 
degraded  accident  of  this,  are  twro  laws  of  beauty  in  form, 
and  of  nobility  in  character,  which  stand  in  the  chaos  of  crea- 
tion between  the  Living  and  the  Dead,  to  separate  the  things 
that  have  in  them  a sacred  and  helpful,  from  those  that  have 
in  them  an  accursed  and  destroying,  nature  ; and  the  power 
of  Athena,  first  physically  put  forth  in  the  sculpturing  of  these 

and  eprera,  these  living  and  reptile  things,  is  put  forth, 
finally,  in  enabling  the  hearts  of  men  to  discern  the  one  from 
the  other  ; to  know  the  unquenchable  fires  of  the  Spirit  from 
the  unquenchable  fires  of  Death  ; and  to  choose,  not  unaided, 
between  submission  to  the  Love  that  cannot  end,  or  to  the 
Worm  that  cannot  die. 

101.  The  unconsciousness  of  their  antagonism  is  the  most 
notable  characteristic  of  the  modern  scientific  mind  ; and  I 
believe  no  credulity  or  fallacy  admitted  by  the  weakness  (or 
it  may  sometimes  rather  have  been  the  strength)  of  early  im- 
agination, indicates  so  strange  a depression  beneath  the  due 
scale  of  human  intellect,  as  the  failure  of  the  sense  of  beauty 
in  form,  and  loss  of  faith  in  heroism  of  conduct,  which  have 
become  the  curses  of  recent  science,*  art,  and  policy. 

* ’Tlie  best  modern  illustrated  scientific  works  show  perfect  faculty  of 
representing  monkeys,  lizards,  and  insects  ; absolute  incapability  of 
representing  either  a man,  a horse,  or  a lion. 


IMAGINATION. 


69 


102.  That  depression  of  intellect  has  been  alike  exhibited 
in  the  mean  consternation  confessedly  felt  on  one  side,  and 
the  mean  triumph  apparently  felt  on  the  other,  during  the 
course  of  the  dispute  now  pending  as  to  the  origin  of  man. 
Dispute  for  the  present,  not  to  be  decided,  and  of  which  the 
decision  is  to  persons  in  the  modern  temper  of  mind,  wholly 
without  significance  : and  I earnestly  desire  that  you,  my 
pupils,  may  have  firmness  enough  to  disengage  your  energies 
from  investigation  so  premature  and  so  fruitless,  and  sense 
enough  to  perceive  that  it  does  not  matter  how  you  have 
been  made,  so  long  as  you  are  satisfied  with  being  what  you 
are.  If  you  are  dissatisfied  with  yourselves,  it  ought  not  to 
console,  but  humiliate  you,  to  imagine  that  you  were  once 
seraphs ; and  if  you  are  pleased  with  yourselves,  it  is  not 
any  ground  of  reasonable  shame  to  you  if,  by  no  fault  of 
3rour  own,  you  have  passed  through  the  elementary  condition 
of  apes. 

103.  Remember,  therefore,  that  it  is  of  the  very  highest  im- 
portance that  you  should  know  what  you  are , and  determine 
to  be  the  best  that  you  may  be ; but  it  is  of  no  importance 
whatever,  except  as  it  may  contribute  to  that  end,  to  know 
what  you  have  been.  Whether  your  Creator  shaped  you  with 
fingers,  or  tools,  as  a sculptor  would  a lump  of  clay,  or  gradu- 
ally raised  you  to  manhood  through  a series  of  inferior  forms, 
is  only  of  moment  to  you  in  this  respect — that  in  the  one  case 
you  cannot  expect  your  children  to  be  nobler  creatures  than 
you  are  yourselves — in  the  other,  every  act  and  thought  of 
your  present  life  may  be  hastening  the  advent  of  a race  which 
will  look  back  to  you,  their  fathers  (and  you  ought  at  least 
to  have  attained  the  dignity  of  desiring  that  it  may  be  so), 
with  incredulous  disdain. 

104.  But  that  you  are  yourselves  capable  of  that  disdain 
and  dismay  ; that  you  are  ashamed  of  having  been  apes,  if 
you  ever  were  so ; that  you  acknowledge  instinctively,  a 
relation  of  better  and  worse,  and  a law  respecting  what  is 
noble  and  base,  which  makes  it  no  question  to  you  that  the 
man  is  worthier  than  the  baboon — this  is  a fact  of  infinite  sig- 
nificance. This  law  of  preference  in  your  hearts  is  the  true 


70 


ARATRA  PENTELICL 


essence  of  your  being,  and  the  consciousness  of  that  law  is  a 
more  positive  existence  than  any  dependent  on  the  coherence 
or  forms  of  matter. 

105.  Now,  but  a few  words  more  of  mythology,  and  I have 
done.  Remember  that  Athena  holds  the  weaver’s  shuttle,  not 
merely  as  an  instrument  of  texture , but  as  an  instrument  of 
picture  ; the  ideas  of  clothing,  and  of  the  warmth  of  life,  be- 
ing thus  inseparably  connected  with  those  of  graphic  beauty, 
and  the  brightness  of  life.  I have  told  you  that  no  art  could 
be  recovered  among  us  without  perfectness  in  dress,  nor  with- 
out the  elementary  graphic  art  of  women,  in  divers  colours  of 
needlework.  There  has  been  no  nation  of  any  art-energy,  but 
has  strenuously  occupied  and  interested  itself  in  this  house- 
hold picturing,  from  the  web  of  Penelope  to  the  tapestry  of 
Queen  Matilda,  and  the  meshes  of  Arras  and  Gobelins. 

106.  We  should  then  naturally  ask  what  kind  of  embroidery 
Athena  put  on  her  own  robe  ; “ t rriirXov  iavov,  ttolklXov,  ov  p avrrj 
TTOiTjcraTO  koX  Kap,e  xipcnv.” 

The  subject  of  that  7roi/«Ata  of  hers,  as  you  know,  was  the 
war  of  the  giants  and  gods.  Now  the  real  name  of  these 
giants,  remember,  is  that  used  by  Hesiod,  “ 7rr)XoxovoL ,”  “ mud- 
begotten,”  and  the  meaning  of  the  contest  between  these  and 
Zeus,  7rr]\oy6vo)v  i\cLTr]p,  is,  again,  the  inspiration  of  life  into 
the  clay,  by  the  goddess  of  breath  ; and  the  actual  confusion 
going  on  visibly  before  you,  daily,  of  the  earth,  heaping  itself 
into  cumbrous  war  with  the  powers  above  it. 

107.  Thus  briefly,  the  entire  material  of  Art,  under  Athena’s 
hand,  is  the  contest  of  life  with  clay  ; and  all  my  task  in  ex- 
plaining to  you  the  early  thought  of  both  the  Athenian  and 
Tuscan  schools  will  only  be  the  tracing  of  this  battle  of  the 
giants  into  its  full  heroic  form,  when,  not  in  tapestry  only — 
but  in  sculpture — and  on  the  portal  of  the  Temple  of  Delphi 
itself,  you  have  the  “ kXovos  iv  Teiyecri  XaXvoicri  ycyavTUv,’'  and 
their  defeat  hailed  by  the  passionate  cry  of  delight  from  the 
Athenian  maids,  beholding  Pallas  in  her  full  power,  “ AevWa) 
IIaAAa8*  i[iav  Oeov”  my  own  goddess.  All  our  work,  I repeat, 
will  be  nothing  but  the  inquiry  into  the  development  of  this 
one  subject,  and  the  pressing  fully  home  the  question  of  Plato 


IMAGINATION. 


71 


about  that  embroidery — “ And  think  you  that  there  is  verily 
war  with  each  other  among  the  Gods  ? and  dreadful  enmities 
and  battle,  such  as  the  poets  have  told,  and  such  as  our 
painters  set  forth  in  graven  scripture,  to  adorn  all  our  sacred 
rites  and  holy  places  ; yes,  and  in  the  great  Panathenaea 
themselves,  the  Peplus,  full  of  such  wild  picturing,  is  carried 
up  into  the  Acropolis — shall  we  %ay  that  these  things  are  true, 
oh  Euthuphron,  right-minded  friend  ? ” 

108.  Yes,  we  say,  and  know,  that  these  things  are  true  ; 
and  true  for  ever  : battles  of  the  gods,  not  among  themselves, 
but  against  the  earth-giants.  Battle  prevailing  age  by  age,  in 
nobler  life  and  lovelier  imagery  ; creation,  which  no  theory  of 
mechanism,  no  definition  of  force,  can  explain,  the  adoption 
and  completing  of  individual  form  by  individual  animation, 
breathed  out  of  the  lips  of  the  Father  of  Spirits.  And  to 
recognize  the  presence  in  every  knitted  shape  of  dust,  by 
which  it  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being — to  recognize  it, 
revere,  and  show  it  forth,  is  to  be  our  eternal  Idolatry. 

“ Thou  shait  not  bow  down  to  them,  nor  worship  them.” 

“ Assuredly  no,”  we  answered  once,  in  our  pride  ; and 
through  porch  and  aisle,  broke  down  the  carved  work  thereof, 
with  axes  and  hammers. 

Who  would  have  thought  the  day  so  near  when  we  should 
bow  down  to  worship,  not  the  creatures,  but  their  atoms, — 
not  the  forces  that  form,  but  those  that  dissolve  them  ? Trust 
me,  gentlemen,  the  command  which  is  stringent  against  ado- 
ration of  brutality,  is  stringent  no  less  against  adoration  of 
chaos,  nor  is  faith  in  an  image  fallen  from  heaven  to  be  re- 
formed by  a faith  only  in  the  phenomenon  of  decadence.  We 
have  ceased  from  the  making  of  monsters  to  be  appeased  by 
sacrifice  ; — it  is  well, — if  indeed  we  have  also  ceased  from 
making  them  iiYour  thoughts.  We  have  learned  to  distrust, 
the  adorning  of  fair  phantasms,  to  which  we  once  sought  for 
succour  ; — it  is  well,  if  we  learn  to  distrust  also  the  adorning  of 
those  to  which  we  seek,  for  temptation  ; but  the  verity  of  gains 
like  these  can  only  be  known  by  our  confession  of  the  divine 
seal  of  strength  and  beauty  upon  the  tempered  frame,  and 
honour  in  the  fervent  heart,  by  which,  increasing  visibly,  may 


72 


ARATRA  RENTE  LI  CL 


yet  be  manifested  to  us  the  holy  presence,  and  the  approving 
love,  of  the  Loving  God,  who  visits  the  iniquities  of  the 
Fathers  upon  the  Children,  unto  the  third  and  fourth  genera- 
tion of  them  that  hate  Him,  and  shows  mercy  unto  thousands 
in  them  that  love  Him,  and  keep  His  Commandments. 


LECTURE  IV. 

LIKENESS. 

November,  1870. 

109.  You  were  probably  vexed,  and  tired,  towards  the  close  of 
my  last  lecture,  by  the  time  it  took  us  to  arrive  at  the  appar- 
ently simple  conclusion,  that  sculpture  must  only  represent 
organic  form,  and  the  strength  of  life  in  its  contest  with  mat- 
ter. But  it  is  no  small  thing  to  have  that  “ Xevcrcro)  IldXXaSa  ” 
fixed  in  your  minds,  as  the  one  necessary  sign  by  which  you 
are  to  recognize  right  sculpture,  and  believe  me  you  will  find 
it  the  best  of  all  things,  if  you  can  take  for  yourselves  the  say- 
ing from  the  lips  of  the  Athenian  maids,  in  its  entirety,  and 
say  also — Xevacrco  HdXXaS’  e/x av  Oeov.  I proceed  to-day  into 
the  practical  appliance  of  this  apparently  speculative,  but  in 
reality  imperative,  law. 

110.  You  observe,  I have  hitherto  spoken  of  the  power  of 
Athena,  as  over  painting  no  less  than  sculpture.  Bat  her  rule 
over  both  arts  is  only  so  far  as  they  are  zoographic  ; — repre- 
sentative, that  is  to  say,  of  animal  life,  or  of  such  order  and 
discipline  among  other  elements,  as  may  invigorate  and  purify 
it.  Now  there  is  a speciality  of  the  art  of  painting  beyond 
this,  namely,  the  representation  of  phenomena  of  colour  and 
shadow,  as  such,  without  question  of  the  nature  of  the  tilings 
that  receive  them.  I am  now  accordingly  obliged  to  speak  of 
sculpture  and  painting  as  distinct  arts,  but  the  laws  which 
bind  sculpture,  bind  no  less  the  painting  of  the  higher  schools 
which  has,  for  its  main  purpose,  the  showing  beauty  in  human 
or  animal  form  ; and  which  is  therefore  placed  by  the  Greeks 


LIKENESS. 


73 


equally  under  the  rule  of  Athena,  as  the  Spirit,  first,  of  Life, 
and  then  of  Wisdom  in  conduct. 

111.  First,  I say,  you  are  to  “see  Pallas  ” in  all  such  work, 
as  the  Queen  of  Life  ; and  the  practical  law  which  follows 
from  this,  is  one  of  enormous  range  and  importance’  namely, 
that  nothing  must  be  represented  by  sculpture,  external  to 
any  living  form,  which  does  not  help  to  enforce  or  illustrate 
the  conception  of  life.  Both  dress  and  armour  may  be  made 
to  do  this,  by  great  sculptors,  and  are  continually  so  used  by 
the  greatest.  One  of  the  essential  distinctions  between  the 
Athenian  and  Florentine  schools  is  dependent  on  their  treat- 
ment of  drapery  in  this  respect  ; an  Athenian  always  sets  it  to 
exhibit  the  action  of  the  body,  by  flowing  with  it,  or  over  it, 
or  from  it,  so  as  to  illustrate  both  its  form  and  gesture  ; a 
Florentine,  on  the  contrary,  always  uses  his  drapery  to  con- 
ceal or  disguise  the  forms  of  the  body,  and  exhibit  mental 
emotion : but  both  use  it  to  enhance  the  life,  either  of  the 
body  or  soul  ; Donatello  and  Michael  Angelo,  no  less  than  the 
sculptors  of  Gothic  chivalry,  ennoble  armour  in  the  same  way  ; 
but  base  sculjotors  carve  drapery  and  armour  for  the  sake  of 
their  folds  and  picturesqueness  only,  and  forget  the  body  be- 
neath. The  rule  is  so  stern  that  all  delight  in  mere  incidental 
beauty,  which  painting  often  triumphs  in,  is  wholly  forbidden 
to  sculpture  ; — for  instance,  in  painting  the  branch  of  a tree, 
you  may  rightly  represent  and  enjoy  the  lichens  and  moss  on 
it,  but  a sculptor  must  not  touch  one  of  them  : they  are  ines- 
sential to  the  tree’s  life, — he  must  give  the  flow  and  bending 
of  the  branch  only,  else  he  does  not  enough  “ see  Pallas  ” 
in  it. 

Or  to  take  a higher  instance,  here  is  an  exquisite  little 
painted  poem,  by  Edward  Frere  ; a cottage  interior,  one  of 
the  thousands  which  within  the  last  two  months  * have  been 
laid  desolate  in  unhappy  France.  Every  accessory  in  the 
painting  is  of  value — the  fire-side,  the  tiled  floor,  the  vegetables 
lying  upon  it,  and  the  basket  hanging  from  the  roof.  But 
not  one  of  these  accessories  would  have  been  admissible 

* See  date  of  delivery  of  Lecture.  The  picture  was  of  a peasant  girl 
of  eleven  or  twelve  years  old,  peeling  carrots  by  a cottage  fire. 


74 


ABATE  A PEN TEL  I GI. 


in  sculpture.  You  must  carve  nothing  but  what  has  life. 
“ Why  ” ? you  probably  feel  instantly  inclined  to  ask  me. — 
You  see  the  principle  we  have  got,  instead  of  being  blunt  or 
useless,  is  such  an  edged  tool  that  you  are  startled  the  moment 
I apply  it.  “ Must  we  refuse  every  pleasant  accessory  and 
picturesque  detail,  and  petrify  nothing  but  living  creatures  ” ? 
— Even  so  : I would  not  assert  it  on  my  own  authority.  It  is 
the  Greeks  who  say  it,  but  whatever  they  say  of  sculpture,  be 
assured,  is  true. 

112.  That  then  is  the  first  law — you  must  see  Pallas  as  the 
Lady  of  Life — the  second  is,  you  must  see  her  as  the  Lady  of 
Wisdom  ; or  o-o^i a — and  this  is  the  chief  matter  of  all.  I can- 
not but  think,  that  after  the  considerations  into  which  we 
have  now  entered,  you  will  find  more  interest  than  hitherto 
in  comparing  the  statements  of  Aristotle,  in  the  Ethics,  with 
those  of  Plato  in  the  Polity,  which  are  authoritative  as  Greek 
definitions  of  goodness  in  art,  and  which  you  may  safely  hold 
authoritative  as  constant  definitions  of  it.  You  remember, 
doubtless,  that  the  cro^ta,  or  apery  reyi^s,  for  the  sake  of  which 
Phidias  is  called  Cronos  as  a sculptor,  and  Polyclitus  as  an 
image-maker,  Eth.  6.  7.  (the  opposition  is  both  between  ideal 
and  portrait  sculpture,  and  between  working  in  stone  and 
bronze)  consists  in  the  “ vovs  rwv  ripa^rdr^v  ry  <pv<rei “the 
mental  apprehension  of  the  things  that  are  most  honourable 
in  their  nature.”  Therefore  what  is,  indeed,  most  lovely,  the 
true  image-maker  will  n;ost  love  ; and  what  is  most  hate- 
ful, he  will  most  hate,  and  in  all  things  discern  the  best  and 
strongest  part  of  them,  and  represent  that  essentially,  or,  if 
the  opposite  of  that,  then  with  manifest  detestation  and  horror. 
That  is  his  art  wisdom  ; the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and 
the  love  of  good,  so  that  you  may  discern,  even  in  his  repre- 
sentation of  the  vilest  thing,  his  acknowledgment  of  what  re- 
demption is  possible  for  it,  or  latent  power  exists  in  it ; and, 
contrariwise,  his  sense  of  its  present  misery.  But  for  the  most 
part,  he  will  idolize,  and  force  us  also  to  idolize,  whatever  is 
living,  and  virtuous,  and  victoriously  right ; opposing  to  it 
in  some  definite  mode  the  image  of  the  conquered  epnerov. 

113.  This  is  generally  true  of  both  the  great  arts  ; but  in 


LIKENESS . 


75 


severity  and  precision,  true  of  sculpture.  To  return  to  our 
illustration  : this  poor  little  girl  was  more  interesting  to  Ed- 
ward Frere,  he  being  a painter,  because  she  was  poorly  dressed, 
and  wore  these  clumsy  shoes,  and  old  red  cap,  and  patched 
gown.  May  we  sculpture  her  so?  No.  We  may  sculpture 
her  naked,  if  we  like  ; but  not  in  rags. 

But  if  we  may  not  put  her  into  marble  in  rags,  may  we  give 
her  a pretty  frock  with  ribands  and  flounces  to  it,  and  put 
her  into  marble  in  that?  No.  We  may  put  her  simplest 
peasant’s  dress,  so  it  be  perfect  and  orderly,  into  marble  ; any- 
thing finer  than  that  would  be  more  dishonourable  in  the  eyes 
of  Athena  than  rags.  If  she  were  a French  princess,  you 
might  carve  her  embroidered  robe  and  diadem  ; if  she  were 
Joan  of  Arc  you  might  carve  her  armour — for  then  these  also 
would  be  Ct  tCov  rt/nwraTtor,”  not  otherwise. 

114.  Is  not  this  an  edge-tool  we  have  got  hold  of,  unawares  ? 
and  a subtle  one  too  ; so  delicate  and  scimitar-like  in  decision. 
For  note,  that  even  Joan  of  Arc’s  armour  must  be  only  sculpt- 
ured, if  she  has  it  on  ; it  is  not  the  honourableness  or  beauty 
of  it  that  are  enough,  but  the  direct  bearing  of  it  by  her  body. 
You  might  be  deeply,  even  pathetically,  interested  by  looking* 
at  a good  knight’s  dinted  coat  of  mail,  left  in  his  desolate  hall. 
May  you  sculpture  it  where  it  hangs  ? No  ; the  helmet  for 
his  pillow,  if  yon  will — no  more. 

You  see  we  did  not  do  our  dull  work  for  nothing  in  last 
lecture.  I define  what  we  have  gained  once  more,  and  then 
we  will  enter  on  our  new  ground. 

115.  The  proper  subject  of  sculpture,  we  have  determined, 
is  the  spiritual  power  seen  in  the  form  of  any  living  thing, 
and  so  represented  as  to  give  evidence  that  the  sculptor  has 
loved  the  good  of  it  and  hated  the  evil. 

“ So  represented,”  we  say  ; but  how  is  that  to  be  done  ? 
Why  should  it  not  be  represented,  if  possible,  just  as  it  is 
seen  ? What  mode  or  limit  of  representation  may  we  adopt  ? 
We  are  to  carve  things  that  have  life  ; — shall  we  try  so  to  imi- 
tate them  that  they  may  indeed  seem  living, — or  only  half 
living,  and  like  stone  instead  of  flesh  ? 

It  will  simplify  this  question  if  I show  you  three  examples 


76 


ARATRA  PEN  TEL  J CI. 


of  what  the  Greeks  actually  did  : three  typical  pieces  of  their 
sculpture,  in  order  of  perfection. 

116.  And  now,  observe  that  in  all  our  historical  work,  I will 
endeavour  to  do,  myself,  what  I have  asked  you  to  do  in  your 
drawing  exercises  ; namely,  to  outline  firmly  in  the  beginning, 
and  then  fill  in  the  detail  more  minutely.  I will  give  you 
first,  therefore,  in  a symmetrical  form,  absolutely  simple  and 
easily  remembered,  the  large  chronology  of  the  Greek  school ; 
within  that  unforgettable  scheme  we  will  place,  as  we  discover 
them,  the  minor  relations  of  arts  and  times. 

I number  the  nine  centuries  before  Christ  thus,  upwards, 
and  divide  them  into  three  groups  of  three  each. 


A.  ARCHAIC.  s 


9 

8 


l 7 


B.  BEST.  -< 


C.  CORRUPT.  ■{ 


6 

5 

4 

3 

2 

1 


Then  the  ninth,  eighth,  and  seventh  centuries  are  the  period 
of  Archaic  Greek  Art,  steadily  progressive  wherever  it  existed. 

The  sixth,  fifth,  and  fourth  are  the  period  of  central  Greek 
Art ; the  fifth,  or  central  century  producing  the  finest.  That 
is  easily  recollected  by  the  battle  of  Marathon.  And  the  third, 
second,  and  first  centuries  are  the  period  of  steady  decline. 

Learn  this  ABC  thoroughly,  and  mark,  for  yourselves, 
what  you,  at  present,  think  the  vital  events  in  each  century. 
As  you  know  more,  you  will  think  other  events  the  vital  ones  ; 
but  the  best  historical  knowledge  only  approximates  to  true 


LIKE  ft  ESS. 


77 


thought  in  that  matter  ; only  be  sure  that  what  is  truly  vital 
in  the  character  which  governs  events,  is  always  expressed  by 
the  art  of  the  century  ; so  that  if  you  could  interpret  that  art 
rightly,  the  better  part  of  your  task  in  reading  history  would 
be  done  to  your  hand. 

117.  It  is  generally  impossible  to  date  with  precision  art  of 
the  archaic  period — often  difficult  to  date  even  that  of  the 
central  three  hundred  years.  I wTill  not  weary  you  with  futile 
minor  divisions  of  time;  here  are  three  coins  (Plate  VIL) 
roughly,  but  decisively,  characteristic  of  the  three  ages.  The 
first  is  an  early  coin  of  Tarentum.  The  city  was  founded  as 
you  know,  by  the  Spartan  Plialanthus,  late  in  the  eighth 
century.  I believe  the  head  is  meant  for  that  of  Apollo 
Archegetes,  it  may  however  be  Taras,  the  son  of  Poseidon  ; it 
is  no  matter  to  us  at  present  whom  it  is  meant  for,  but  the 
fact  that  we  cannot  know,  is  itself  of  the  greatest  import.  We 
cannot  say,  with  any  certainty,  unless  by  discovery  of  some 
collateral  evidence,  whether  this  head  is  intended  for  that  of 
a god,  or  demi-god,  or  a mortal  warrior.  Ought  not  that  to 
disturb  some  of  your  thoughts  respecting  Greek  idealism? 
Farther,  if  by  investigation  we  discover  that  the  head  is  meant 
for  that  of  Phalanthus,  we  shall  know  nothing  of  the  charac- 
ter of  Phalanthus  from  the  face  ; for  there  is  no  portraiture 
at  this  early  time. 

118.  The  second  coin  is  of  JEnus  in  Macedonia  ; probably 
of  the  fifth  or  early  fourth  century,  and  entirely  characteristic 
of  the  central  period.  This  we  know  to  represent  the  face  of 
a god — Hermes.  The  third  coin  is  a king’s,  not  a city’s.  I 
will  not  tell  you,  at  this  moment,  what  king’s ; but  only  that 
it  is  a late  coin  of  the  third  period,  and  that  it  is  as  distinct 
in  purpose  as  the  coin  of  Tarentum  is  obscure.  We  know  of 
this  coin,  that  it  represents  no  god  nor  demi-god,  but  a mere 
mortal ; and  we  know  precisely,  from  the  portrait,  what  that 
mortal’s  face  was  like. 

119.  A glance  at  the  three  coins,  as  they  are  set  side  by 
side,  will  now  show  you  the  main  differences  in  the  three  great 
Greek  styles.  The  archaic  coin  is  sharp  and  hard  ; every  line 
decisive  and  numbered,  set  unhesitatingly  in  its  place  ; nothing 


78 


A Pc  A TIM  PENT  ELI CL 


is  wrong,  though  everything  incomplete,  and,  to  us  who  have 
seen  finer  art,  ugly.  The  central  coin  is  as  decisive  and  clear 
in  arrangement  of  masses,  but  its  contours  are  completely 
rounded  and  finished.  There  is  no  character  in  its  execution 
so  prominent  that  you  can  give  an  epithet  to  the  style.  It  is 
not  hard,  it  is  not  soft,  it  is  not  delicate,  it  is  not  coarse,  it  is 
not  grotesque,  it  is  not  beautiful ; and  I am  convinced,  unless 
you  had  been  told  that  this  is  fine  central  Greek  art,  you 
would  have  seen  nothing  at  all  in  it  to  interest  you.  Do  not 
let  yourselves  be  anywise  forced  into  admiring  it ; there  is, 
indeed,  nothing  more  here,  than  an  approximately  true  ren- 
dering of  a healthy  youthful  face,  without  the  slightest  attempt 
to  give  an  expression  of  activity,  cunning,  nobility,  or  any 
other  attribute  of  the  Mercurial  mind.  Extreme  simplicity, 
unpretending  vigour  of  work,  which  claims  no  admiration 
either  for  minuteness  or  dexterity,  and  suggests  no  idea  of 
effort  at  all ; refusal  of  extraneous  ornament,  and  perfectly 
arranged  disposition  of  counted  masses  in  a sequent  order, 
whether  in  the  beads,  or  the  ringlets  of  hair  ; this  is  all  you 
have  to  be  pleased  with  ; neither  will  you  ever  find,  in  the 
best  Greek  Art,  more.  You  might  at  first  suppose  that  the 
chain  of  beads  round  the  cap  was  an  extraneous., ornament ; 
but  I have  little  doubt  that  it  is  as  definitely  the  proper  fillet 
for  the  head  of  Hermes,  as  the  olive  for  Zeus,  or  corn  for 
Triptolemus.  The  cap  or  petasus  cannot  have  expanded  edges, 
there  is  no  room  for  them  on  the  coin  ; these  must  be  under- 
stood, therefore  ; but  the  nature  of  the  cloud-petasus  is  ex- 
plained by  edging  it  with  beads,  representing  either  dew  or 
hail.  The  shield  of  Athena  often  bears  white  pellets  for  hail, 
in  like  manner. 

120.  The  third  coin  will,  I think,  at  once  strike  you  by 
what  we  moderns  should  call  its  “ vigour  of  character.” 
You  may  observe  also  that  the  features  are  finished  with 
great  care  and  subtlety,  but  at  the  cost  of  simplicity  and 
breadth.  But  the  essential  difference  between  it  and  the 
central  art,  is  its  disorder  in  design — you  see  the  locks  of  hair 
cannot  be  counted  any  longer — they  are  entirely  dishevelled 
and  irregular.  Now  the  individual  character  may,  or  may  not 


LIKENESS. 


79 


be,  a sign  of  decline  ; but  the  licentiousness,  the  casting  loose 
of  the  masses  in  the  design,  is  an  infallible  one.  The  effort 
at  portraiture  is  good  for  art  if  the  men  to  be  portrayed  are 
good  men,  not  otherwise.  In  the  instance  before  you,  the 
head  is  that  of  Mitliridates  YI.  of  Pontus,  who  had,  indeed, 
the  good  qualities  of  being  a linguist  and  a patron  of  the  arts  ; 
but  as  you  will  remember,  murdered,  according  to  report,  his 
mother,  certainly  his  brother,  certainly  his  wives  and  sisters, 
I have  not  counted  how  many  of  his  children,  and  from  a hun- 
dred to  a hundred  and  fifty  thousand  persons  besides  ; these 
last  in  a single  day’s  massacre.  The  effort  to  represent  this 
kind  of  person  is  not  by  any  means  a method  of  study  from 
life  ultimately  beneficial  to  art. 

121.  This  however  is  not  the  point  I have  to  urge  to-day. 
What  I want  you  to  observe  is  that,  though  the  master  of  the 
great  time  does  not  attempt  portraiture,  he  does  attempt  ani- 
mation. And  as  far  as  his  means  will  admit,  he  succeeds  in 
making  the  face — you  might  almost  think — vulgarly  animated  ; 
as  like  a real  face,  literally,  “as  it  can  stare.”  Yes:  and  its 
sculptor  meant  it  to  be  so  ; and  that  was  what  Phidias  meant 
his  Jupiter  to  be,  if  he  could  manage  it.  Not,  indeed,  to  be 
taken  for  Zeus  himself ; and  yet,  to  be  as  like  a living  Zeus  as 
art  could  make  it.  Perhaps  you  think  he  tried  to  make  it  look 
living  only  for  the  sake  of  the  mob,  and  would  not  have  tried 
to  do  so  for  connoisseurs.  Pardon  me  ; for  real  connoisseurs, 
he  would,  and  did  ; and  herein  consists  a truth  which  belongs 
to  all  the  arts,  and  which  I will  at  once  drive  home  in  your 
minds,  as  firmly  as  I can. 

122.  All  second-rate  artists — (and  remember,  the  second- 
rate  ones  are  a loquacious  multitude,  while  the  great  come 
only  one  or  two  in  a century  ; and  then,  silently) — all  second- 
rate  artists  will  tell  you  that  the  object  of  fine  art  is  not  re- 
semblance, but  some  kind  of  abstraction  more  refined  than 
reality.  Put  that  out  of  your  heads  at  once.  The  object  of 
the  great  Resemblant  Arts  is,  and  always  has  been,  to  resemble; 
and  to  resemble  as  closely  as  possible.  It  is  the  function  of  a 
good  portrait  to  set  the  man  before  you  in  habit  as  he  lived, 
and  I would  we  had  a few  more  that  did  so.  It  is  the  function 


80 


A RATE  A RENT  ELI  CL 


of  a good  landscape  to  set  the  scene  before  you  in  its  reality  ; 
to  make  you,  if  it  may  be,  think  the  clouds  are  flying,  and 
the  streams  foaming.  It  is  the  function  of  the  best  sculptor 
— the  true  Daedalus — to  make  stillness  look  like  breathing, 
and  marble  look  like  flesh. 

123.  And  in  all  great  times  of  art,  this  purpose  is  as  naively 
expressed  as  it  is  steadily  held.  All  the  talk  about  abstraction 
belongs  to  periods  of  decadence.  In  living  times,  people  see 
something  living  that  pleases  them  ; and  they  try  to  make  it 
live  for  ever,  or  to  make  it  something  as  like  it  as  possible,  that 
will  last  for  ever.  They  paint  their  statues,  and  inlay  the  eyes 
with  jewels,  and  set  real  crowns  on  their  heads ; they  finish, 
in  their  pictures,  every  thread  of  embroidery,  and  would  fain, 
if  they  could,  draw  every  leaf  upon  the  trees.  And  their  only 
verbal  expression  of  conscious  success  is,  that  they  have  made 
their  work  “look  real.” 

124.  You  think  all  that  very  wrong.  So  did  I,  once  ; but 
it  was  I that  was  wrong.  A long  time  ago,  before  ever  I had 
seen  Oxford,  I painted  a picture  of  the  Lake  of  Como,  for  my 
father.  It  was  not  at  all  like  the  Lake  of  Como;  but  I thought 
it  rather  the  better  for  that.  My  father  differed  with  me  ; and 
objected  particularly  to  a boat  with  a red  and  yellow  awning, 
which  I had  put  into  the  most  conspicuous  corner  of  my  draw- 
ing. I declared  this  boat  to  be  “necessary  to  the  composi- 
tion.” My  father  not  the  less  objected,  that  he  had  never  seen 
such  a boat,  either  at  Como  or  elsewhere  ; and  suggested  that 
if  I would  make  the  lake  look  a little  more  like  water,  I should 
be  under  no  necessity  of  explaining  its  nature  by  the  presence 
of  floating  objects.  I thought  him  at  the  time  a very  simple 
person  for  his  pains  ; but  have  since  learned,  and  it  is  the  very 
gist  of  all  practical  matters,  which,  as  professor  of  fine  art,  I 
have  now  to  tell  you,  that  the  great  point  in  painting  a lake  is 
— to  get  it  to  look  like  water. 

125.  So  far,  so  good.  We  lay  it  down  for  a first  principle, 
that  our  graphic  art,  whether  painting  or  sculpture,  is  to  pro- 
duce something  which  shall  look  as  like  Nature  as  possible. 
But  now  we  must  go  one  step  farther,  and  say  that  it  is  to 
produce  what  shall  look  like  Nature  to  people  who  know  what 


LIKENESS. 


81 


Nature  is  like  ! You  see  this  is  at  once  a great  restriction,  as 
well  as  a great  exaltation  of  our  aim.  Our  business  is  not  to 
deceive  the  simple  ; but  to  deceive  the  wise  ! Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  a modern  Italian  print,  representing,  to  the  best  of 
its  power,  St.  Cecilia,  in  a brilliantly  realistic  manner.  And 
the  fault  of  the  work  is  not  in  its  earnest  endeavour  to  show 
St.  Cecilia  in  habit  as  she  lived,  but  in  that  the  effort  could 
only  be  successful  with  persons  unaware  of  the  habit  St.  Ce- 
cilia lived  in.  And  this  condition  of  appeal  only  to  the  wise 
increases  the  difficulty  of  imitative  resemblance  so  greatly, 
that,  with  only  average  skill  or  materials,  wre  must  surrender 
all  hope  of  it,  and  be  content  with  an  imperfect  representa- 
tion, true  as  far  as  it  reaches,  and  such  as  to  excite  the  imagi- 
nation of  a wise  beholder  to  complete  it ; though  falling  very 
far  short  of  what  either  he  or  we  should  otherwise  have  de- 
sired. For  instance,  here  is  a suggestion,  by  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds, of  the  general  appearance  of  a British  Judge — requir- 
ing the  imagination  of  a very  wise  beholder  indeed,  to  fill  it 
up,  or  even  at  first  to  discover  what  it  is  meant  for.  Never- 
theless, it  is  better  art  than  the  Italian  St.  Cecilia,  because  the 
artist,  however  little  he  may  have  done  to  represent  his  knowl- 
edge, does,  indeed,  know  altogether  what  a Judge  is  like,  and 
appeals  only  to  the  criticism  of  those  who  know  also. 

126.  There  must  be,  therefore,  twTo  degrees  of  truth  to  be 
looked  for  in  the  good  graphic  arts  ; one,  the  commonest, 
which,  by  any  partial  or  imperfect  sign  conveys  to  you  an  idea 
which  you  must  complete  for  yourself ; and  the  other,  the 
finest,  a representation  so  perfect  as  to  leave  you  nothing  to 
be  farther  accomplished  by  this  independent  exertion  ; but  to 
give  you  the  same  feeling  of  possession  and  presence  which 
you  would  experience  from  the  natural  object  itself.  For  in- 
stance of  the  first,  in  this  representation  of  a rainbow,*  the 
artist  has  no  hope  that,  by  the  black  lines  of  engraving,  he  can 
deceive  you  into  any  belief  of  the  rainbow’s  being  there,  but 
he  gives  indication  enough  of  what  he  intends,  to  enable  you 
to  supply  the  rest  of  the  idea  yourself,  providing  always  you 
know  beforehand  what  a rainbow  is  like.  But  in  this  drawing 
* In  Durer’s  “ Melancholia.” 


6 


S2 


AEATBA  PENTELIGI. 


of  the  falls  of  Terni,*  the  painter  has  strained  his  skill  to  the 
utmost  to  give  an  actually  deceptive  resemblance  of  the  iris, 
dawning  and  fading  among  the  foam.  So  far  as  he  has  not 
actually  deceived  you,  it  is  not  because  he  would  not  have 
done  so  if  he  could ; but  only  because  his  colours  and  science 
have  fallen  short  of  his  desire.  They  have  fallen  so  little  short 
that,  in  a good  light,  you  may  all  but  believe  the  foam  and 
the  sunshine  are  drifting  and  changing  among  the  rocks. 

127.  And  after  looking  a little  while,  you  will  begin  to  re- 
gret that  they  are  not  so  : you  will  feel  that,  lovely  as  the 
drawing  is,  you  would  like  far  better  to  see  the  real  place,  and 
the  goats  skipping  among  the  rocks,  and  the  spray  floating 
above  the  fall.  And  this  is  the  true  -sign  of  the  greatest  art 
— to  part  voluntarily  with  its  greatness; — to  make  itself  poor 
and  unnoticed  ; but  so  to  exalt  and  set  forth  its  theme  that 
you  may  be  fain  to  see  the  theme  instead  of  it.  So  that  you 
have  never  enough  admired  a great  workman’s  doing  till  you 
have  begun  to  despise  it.  The  best  homage  that  could  be  paid 
to  the  Athena  of  Phidias  would  be  to  desire  rather  to  see  the 
living  goddess  ; and  the  loveliest  Madonnas  of  Christian  art 
fall  short  of  their  due  power,  if  they  do  not  make  their  be- 
holders sick  at  heart  to  see  the  living  Virgin. 

128.  We  have  then,  for  our  requirement  of  the  finest  art 
(sculpture,  or  anything  else),  that  it  shall  be  so  like  the 
thing  it  represents  as  to  please  those  who  best  know  or  can 
conceive  the  original ; and,  if  possible,  please  them  decep- 
tively— its  final  triumph  being  to  deceive  even  the  wise  ; 
and  (the  Greeks  thought)  to  please  even  the  Immortals,  who 
were  so  wise  as  to  be  undeceivable.  So  that  you  get  the 
Greek,  thus  far  entirely  true,  idea  of  perfectness  in  sculpture, 
expressed  to  you  by  what  Plialaris  says,  at  first  sight  of  the 
bull  of  Perilaus,  “It  only  wanted  motion  and  bellowing  to 
seem  alive  ; and  as  soon  as  I saw  it,  I cried  out,  it  ought  to 
be  sent  to  the  god.”  To  Apollo,  for  only  he,  the  undeceiv- 
able, could  thoroughly  understand  such  sculpture,  and  per- 
fectly delight  in  it. 

129.  And  with  this  expression  of  the  Greek  ideal  of  sculpt- 

* Turner’s,  in  tlie  Hake  will  series. 


LIKENESS. 


83 

ure,  I wish  you  to  join  the  early  Italian,  summed  in  a single  lino 
by  Dante — “non  vide  me’  di  me,  chi  vide  1 vero.”  Read  the 
12th  canto  of  the  “ Purgatory, ” and  learn  that  whole  passage 
by  heart ; and  if  ever  you  chance  to  go  to  Pistoja,  look  at 
La  Robbia’s  coloured  porcelain  bas-reliefs  of  the  seven  works 
of  Mercy  on  the  front  of  the  hospital  there  ; and  note  es- 
pecially the  faces  of  the  two  sick  men — one  at  the  point  of 
death,  and  the  other  in  the  first  peace  and  long-drawn  breath- 
ing of  health  after  fever — and  you  will  know  what  Dante 
meant  by  the  preceding  line,  “Morti  li  morti,  e i vivi  paren 
vivi.” 

130.  But  now,  may  we  not  ask  farther, — is  it  impossible 
for  art  such  as  this,  prepared  for  the  wise,  to  please  the 
simple  also  ? Without  entering  on  the  awrkward  questions 
of  degree,  how  many  the  wise  can  be,  or  how  much  men 
should  know,  in  order  to  be  rightly  called  wise,  may  we  not 
conceive  an  art  to  be  possible,  which  w^ould  deceive  every- 
body, or  everybody  worth  deceiving  ? I showed  you  at  my 
first  lecture,  a little  ringlet  of  Japan  ivory,  as  a type  of  ele- 
mentary bas-relief  touched  w7ith  colour  ; and  in  your  rudi- 
mentary series  you  have  a drawing  b}r  Mr.  Burgess,  of  one  of 
the  little  fishes  enlarged,  with  every  touch  of  the  chisel  fac- 
similed on  the  more  visible  scale  ; and  showing  the  little 
black  bead  inlaid  for  the  eye,  which  in  the  original  is  hardly 
to  be  seen  without  a lens.  You  may,  perhaps  be  surprised, 
when  I tell  you,  that  (putting  the  question  of  subject  aside 
for  the  moment,  and  speaking  only  of  the  mode  of  execution 
and  aim  at  resemblance),  you  have  there  a perfect  example  of 
the  Greek  ideal  of  method  in  sculpture.  And  you  will 
admit  that,  to  the  simplest  person  whom  we  could  introduce 
as  a critic,  that  fish  would  be  a satisfactory,  nay,  almost  a 
deceptive  fish  ; while  to  any  one  caring  for  subtleties  of  art,  I 
need  not  point  out  that  every  touch  of  the  chisel  is  applied 
with  consummate  knowledge,  and  that  it  would  be  impossible 
to  convey  more  truth  and  life  with  the  given  quantity  of 
workmanship. 

131.  Here  is,  indeed,  a drawing  by  Turner,  (Edu.  131), 
in  which  with  some  fifty  times  the  quantity  of  labour,  and 


84 


ABA TEA  PENTEL1CL 


far  more  highly  educated  faculty  of  sight,  the  artist  lias 
expressed  some  qualities  of  lustre  and  colour  which  only 
very  wise  persons  indeed  could  perceive  in  a John  Dory ; 
and  this  piece  of  paper  contains,  therefore,  much  more,  and 
more  subtle,  art,  than  the  Japan  ivory  ; but  are  we  sure  that 
it  is  therefore  greater  art?  or  that  the  painter  was  better 


Pig.  7. 


employed  in  producing  this  drawing,  which  only  one  person 
can  possess,  and  only  one  in  a hundred  enjoy,  than  he  would 
have  been  in  producing  two  or  three  pieces  on  a larger  scale, 
which  should  have  been  at  once  accessible  to,  and  enjoyable 
by,  a number  of  simpler  persons  ? Suppose  for  instance, 
that  Turner,  instead  of  faintly  touching  this  outline,  on  white 
paper,  with  his  camel’s  hair  pencil,  had  struck  the  main  forms 
of  his  fish  into  marble,  thus  (Fig.  7) : and  instead  of  colouring 
the  white  paper  so  delicately  that,  perhaps,  only  a few  of  the 
most  keenly  observant  artists  in  England  can  see  it  at  all,  had, 


LIKENESS. 


85 


with  his  strong  hand,  tinted  the  marble  with  a few  colours, 
deceptive  to  the  people,  and  harmonious  to  the  initiated  ; 
suppose  that  he  had  even  conceded  so  much  to  the  spirit  of 
popular  applause  as  to  allow  of  a bright  glass  bead  being  inlaid 
for  the  eye,  in  the  Japanese  manner  ; and  that  the  enlarged, 
deceptive,  and  popularly  pleasing  work  had  been  carved  on 
the  outside  of  a great  building, — say  Fishmongers’  Hall, — 
where  everybody  commercially  connected  with  Billingsgate 
could  have  seen  it,  and  ratified  it  with  the  wisdom  of  the 
market ; — might  not  the  art  have  been  greater,  worthier,  and 
kinder  in  such  use  ? 

132.  Perhaps  the  idea  does  not  once  approve  itself  to  you 
of  having  your  public  buildings  covered  with  ornaments  like 
this  ; but  pray,  remember  that  the  choice  of  subject  is  an  ethi- 
cal question,  not  now  before  us.  All  I ask  you  to  decide  is 
whether  the  method  is  right,  and  would  be  pleasant  in  giving 
the  distinctiveness  to  pretty  things,  which  it  has  here  given 
to  what,  I suppose  it  may  be  assumed,  you  feel  to  be  an  ugly 
thing.  Of  course,  I must  note  parenthetically,  such  realistic 
work  is  impossible  in  a country  where  the  buildings  are  to  be 
discoloured  by  coal-smoke  ; but  so  is  all  fine  sculpture,  whatso- 
ever ; and  the  whiter,  the  worse  its  chance.  For  that  which 
is  prepared  for  private  persons,  to  J be  kept  under  cover,  will, 
of  necessity,  degenerate  into  the  copyism  of  past  work, 
or  merely  sensational  and  sensual  forms  of  present  life,  unless 
there  be  a governing  school  addressing  the  populace,  for 
their  instruction,  on  the  outside  of  buildings.  So  that,  as  I 
partly  warned  you  in  my  third  lecture,  you  can  simply  have 
)io  sculpture  in  a coal  country.  Whether  you  like  coals  or 
carvings  best,  is  no  business  of  mine.  I merely  have  to 
assure  you  of  the  fact  that  they  are  incompatible. 

But,  assuming  that  we  are  again,  some  day,  to  become  a 
civilized  and  governing  race,  deputing  ironmongery,  coal- 
digging, and  lucre-digging,  to  our  slaves  in  other  countries, 
it  is  quite  conceivable  that,  with  an  increasing  knowledge  of 
natural  history,  and  desire  for  such  knowledge,  what  is  now 
done  by  careful,  but  inefficient,  woodcuts,  and  in  ill-coloured 
engravings,  might  be  put  in  quite  permanent  sculptures,  with 


86 


ARATRA  PENTEL1CI. 


inlay  of  variegated  precious  stones,  on  the  outside  of  build- 
ings, where  such  pictures  would  be  little  costly  to  the  peo- 
ple ; and  in  a more  popular  manner  still,  by  Bobbia  ware  and 
Palissy  ware,  and  inlaid  majolica,  which  would  differ  from  the 
housewives’  present  favourite  decoration  of  plates  above  her 
kitchen  dresser,  by  being  every  piece  of  it  various,  instructive, 
and  universally  visible. 

183.  You  hardly  know,  I suppose,  whether  I am  speaking 
in  jest  or  earnest.  In  the  most  solemn  earnest,  I assure  you  ; 
though  such  is  the  strange  course  of  our  popular  life  that 
all  the  irrational  arts  of  destruction  are  at  once  felt  to  be 
earnest ; while  any  plan  for  those  of  instruction  on  a grand 
scale,  sounds  like  a dream  or  jest.  Still,  I do  not  absolutely 
propose  to  decorate  our  public  buildings  with  sculpture 
wholly  of  this  character ; though  beast,  and  fowl,  and  creep- 
ing things,  and  fishes,  might  all  find  room  on  such  a building 
as  the  Solomon’s  House  of  a New  Atlantis ; and  some  of  them 
might  even  become  symbolic  of  much  to  us  again.  Passing- 
through  the  Strand,  only  the  other  day,  for  instance,  I saw 
four  highly  finished  and  delicately  coloured  pictures  of  cock- 
fighting,  which,  for  imitative  quality,  were  nearly  all  that 
could  be  desired,  going  far  beyond  the  Greek  cock  of  Himera ; 
and  they  would  have  delighted  a Greek’s  soul,  if  they  had 
meant  as  much  as  a Greek  cock-fight  ; but  they  were  only 
types  of  the  “ evdo/maxas  dXe/crcop,”  and  of  the  spirit  of  home 
contest,  which  has  been  so  fatal  lately  to  the  Bird  of  France  ; 
and  not  of  the  defence  of  one’s  own  barnyard,  in  thought  of 
which  the  Olympians  set  the  cock  on  the  pillars  of  their 
chariot  course  ; and  gave  it  goodly  alliance  in  its  battle,  as 
you  may  see  here,  in  what  is  left  of  the  angle  of  mouldering 
marble  in  the  chair  of  the  priest  of  Dionusos.  The  cast  of  it, 
from  the  centre  of  the  theatre  under  the  Acropolis,  is  in  the 
British  Museum  ; and  I wanted  its  spiral  for  you,  and  this 
kneeling  Angel  of  Victory  ; — it  is  late  Greek  art,  but  nobly 
systematic  flat  bas-relief.  So  I set  Mr.  Burgess  to  draw  it ; 
but  neither  he  nor  I for  a little  while,  could  make  out  what 
the  Angel  of  Victory  was  kneeling  for.  His  attitude  is  an 
ancient  and  grandly  conventional  one  among  the  Egyptians  ; 


LIKENESS. 


87 


and  I was  tracing  it  back  to  a kneeling  goddess  of  the  great- 
est dynasty  of  the  Pharaohs — a goddess  of  Evening,  or  Death, 
laying  down  the  sun  out  of  her  right  hand  ; — when,  one  bright 
day,  the  shadows  came  out  clear  on  the  Athenian  throne,  and 
I saw  that  my  Angel  of  Victory  was  only  backing  a cock  at  a 
cock-fight. 

134.  Still,  as  I have  said,  there  is  no  reason  why  sculpture, 
even  for  simplest  persons,  should  confine  itself  to  imagery  of 
fish,  or  fowl,  or  four-footed  things. 

We  go  back  to  our  first  principle  : we  ought  to  carve  noth- 
ing but  what  is  honourable.  And  you  are  offended,  at  this 
moment,  with  my  fish,  (as  I believe,  when  the  first  sculptures 
appeared  on  the  windows  of  this  museum,  offence  was  taken 
at  the  unnecessary  introduction  of  cats),  these  dissatisfactions 
being  properly  felt  by  your  “ vovs  tw v TL/uMTaTuv.”  For  in- 
deed, in  all  cases,  our  right  judgment  must  depend  on  our 
wish  to  give  honour  only  to  things  and  creatures  that  deserve 
it. 

135.  And  now  I must  state  to  you  another  principle  of 
veracity,  both  in  sculpture,  and  all  following  arts,  of  wider 
scope  than  any  hitherto  examined.  We  have  seen  that  sculpt- 
ure is  to  be  a true  representation  of  true  external  form. 
Much  more  is  it  to  be  a representation  of  true  internal  emo- 
tion. You  must  carve  only  what  you  yourself  see  as  you  see 
it;  but,  much  more,  you  must  carve  only  what  you  yourself 
feel,  as  you  feel  it.  You  may  no  more  endeavour  to  feel 
through  other  men’s  souls,  than  to  see  with  other  men’s  eyes. 
Whereas  generally  now  in  Europe  and  America,  every  man’s 
energy  is  bent  upon  acquiring  some  false  emotion,  not  his 
own,  but  belonging  to  the  past,  or  to  other  persons,  because 
he  has  been  taught  that  such  and  such  a result  of  it  will  be 
fine.  Every  attempted  sentiment  in  relation  to  art  is  hypo- 
critical ; our  notions  of  sublimity,  of  grace,  or  pious  serenity, 
are  all  second  hand  ; and  we  are  practically  incapable  of  de- 
signing so  much  as  a bell-handle  or  a door-knocker  without 
borrowing  the  first  notion  of  it  from  those  who  are  gone — 
where  we  shall  not  wake  them  with  our  knocking.  I would 
we  could. 


88 


ABATE  A PEN  TE LI Cl. 


136.  In  the  midst  of  this  desolation  we  have  nothing  to 
count  on  for  real  growth,  but  what  we  can  find  of  honest  lik- 
ing and  longing,  in  ourselves  and  in  others.  We  must  dis- 
cover, if  we  would  healthily  advance,  what  things  are  verily 
Ti/xtoj-rara  among  us  ; and  if  we  delight  to  honour  the  dis- 
honourable, consider  how,  in  future,  we  may  better  bestow 
our  likings.  Now  it  appears  to  me  from  all  our  popular 
declarations,  that  we,  at  present,  honour  nothing  so  much  as 
liberty  and  independence  ; and  no  person  so  much  as  the  Free 
man  and  Self-made  man,  who  will  be  ruled  by  no  one,  and 
has  been  taught,  or  helped,  by  no  one.  And  the  reason  I 
chose  a fish  for  you  as  the  first  subject  of  sculpture,  was  that 
in  men  who  are  free  and  self-made,  you  have  the  nearest  ap- 
proach, humanly  possible,  to  the  state  of  the  fish,  and  finely 
organized  epTrerov.  You  get  the  exact  phrase  in  Habakkuk,  if 
you  take  the  Septuagint  text. — “ TToirjcrtLs  rows  avOpdirovs  ws  rovs 
l^Ovas  riys  OaXdcrays,  koI  ws  ra  kpirtTa  rd  ovk  e^ovra  rjyovpievov .” 
“ Thou  wilt  make  men  as  the  fishes  of  the  sea,  and  as  the 
reptile  things,  that  have  no  ruler  over  them A And  it  chanced 
that  as  I was  preparing  this  lecture,  one  of  our  most  able  and 
popular  prints  gave  me  a woodcut  of  the  “ self-made  man,” 
specified  as  such,  so  vigorously  drawn,  and  with  so  few 
touches,  that  Phidias  or  Turner  himself  could  scarcely  have 
done  it  better  ; so  that  I had  only  to  ask  my  assistant  to  en- 
large it  with  accuracy,  and  it  became  comparable  with  my 
fish  at  once.  Of  course  it  is  not  given  by  the  caricaturist  as 
an  admirable  face  ; only,  I am  enabled  by  his  skill  to  set  be- 
fore you,  without  any  suspicion  of  unfairness  on  my  part,  the 
expression  to  which  the  life  we  profess  to  think  most  honour- 
able, naturally  leads.  If  we  were  to  take  the  hat  off,  you  see 
how  nearly  the  profile  corresponds  with  that  of  the  typical 
fish. 

137.  Such,  then,  being  the  definition  by  your  best  popular 
art,  of  the  ideal  of  feature  at  which  we  are  gradually  arriving  by 
self-manufacture  ; when  I place  opposite  to  it  (in  Plate  VIII.) 
the  profile  of  a man  not  in  any  wise  self-made,  neither  by  the 
law  of  his  own  will,  nor  by  the  love  of  his  own  interest — nor 
capable,  for  a moment,  of  any  kind  of  “ Independence,”  or  of 


LIKENESS. 


89 


the  idea  of  independence  ; but  wholly  dependent  upon,  and 
subjected  to,  external  influence  of  just  law,  wise  teaching,  and 
trusted  love  and  truth,  in  his  fellow-spirits  ; — setting  before 
you,  I say,  this  profile  of  a God-made  instead  of  a self-made, 
man,  I know  that  you  will  feel,  on  the  instant,  that  you  are 
brought  into  contact  with  the  vital  elements  of  human  art  ; 
and  that  this,  the  sculpture  of  the  good,  is  indeed  the  only 
permissible  sculpture. 

138.  A God-made  man , I say.  The  face,  indeed,  stands  as 
a symbol  of  more  than  man  in  its  sculptor’s  mind.  For  as  I 
gave  you,  to  lead  your  first  effort  in  the  form  of  leaves,  the 
sceptre  of  Apollo,  so  this,  which  I give  you  as  the  first  type  of 
rightness  in  the  form  of  flesh,  is  the  countenance  of  the  holder 
of  that  sceptre,  the  Sun-God  of  Syracuse.  But  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  face  (nor  did  the  Greek  suppose  there  was)  more 
perfect  than  might  be  seen  in  the  daily  beauty  of  the  creat- 
ures the  Sun-God  shone  upon,  and  whom  his  strength  and 
honour  animated.  This  is  not  an  ideal,  but  a quite  literally 
true,  face  of  a Greek  youth  ; nay,  I will  undertake  to  show 
you  that  it  is  not  supremely  beautiful,  and  even  to  surpass  it 
altogether  with  the  literal  portrait  of  an  Italian  one.  It  is  in 
verity  no  more  than  the  form  habitually  taken  by  the  features 
of  a well  educated  young  Athenian  or  Sicilian  citizen  ; and 
the  one  requirement  for  the  sculptors  of  to-day  is  not,  as  it 
has  been  thought,  to  invent  the  same  ideal,  but  merely  to  see 
the  same  reality. 

Now,  you  know  I told  you  in  my  fourth  lecture,  that  the 
beginning  of  art  was  in  getting  our  country  clean  and  our 
people  beautiful,  and  you  supposed  that  to  be  a statement  ir- 
relevant to  my  subject  ; just  as,  at  this  moment,  you  perhaps 
think,  I am  quitting  the  great  subject  of  this  present  lecture 
— the  method  of  likeness-making — and  letting  myself  branch 
into  the  discussion  of  what  things  we  are  to  make  likeness  of. 
But  you  shall  see  hereafter  that  the  method  of  imitating  a 
beautiful  thing  must  be  different  from  the  method  of  imitat- 
ing an  ugly  one  ; and  that,  with  the  change  in  subject  from 
what  is  dishonourable  to  what  is  honourable,  there  will  be  in- 
volved a parallel  change  in  the  management  of  tools,  of  lines, 


90 


AEA  TEA  PENTELICI. 


and  of  colours.  So  that  before  I can  determine  for  you  how 
you  are  to  imitate,  you  must  tell  me  what  kind  of  face  you 
wish  to  imitate.  The  best  draughtsmen  in  the  world  could 
not  draw  this  Apollo  in  ten  scratches,  though  he  can  draw  the 
self-made  man.  Still  less  this  nobler  Apollo  of  Ionian  Greece, 
(Plate  IX.)  in  which  the  incisions  are  softened  into  a harmony 
like  that  of  Correggio’s  painting.  So  that  you  see  the  method 
itself, — the  choice  between  black  incision  or  fine  sculpture, 
and  perhaps,  presently,  the  choice  between  colour  or  no 
colour,  ^ill  depend  on  what  you  have  to  represent.  Colour 
may  be  expedient  for  a glistening  dolphin  or  a spotted  fawn  ; 
— perhaps  inexpedient  for  white  Poseidon,  and  gleaming 
Dian.  So  that,  before  defining  the  laws  of  sculpture,  I am 
compelled  to  ask  you,  what  you  mean  to  carve  ; and  that,  little 
as  you  think  it,  is  asking  you  how  you  mean  to  live,  and  what 
the  laws  of  your  State  are  to  be,  for  they  determine  those  of 
your  statue.  You  can  only  have  this  kind  of  face  to  study 
from,  in  the  sort  of  state  that  produced  it.  And  you  will  find 
that  sort  of  state  described  in  the  beginning  of  the  fourth 
book  of  the  laws  of  Plato  ; as  founded,  for  one  thing,  on  the 
conviction  that  of  all  the  evils  that  can  happen  to  a state, 
quantity  of  money  is  the  greatest  ! jmec^ov  kclkov,  <Ls  tiros  threw, 
7 roXtc  ovSiv  av  y iyvoiTO,  eh  ytvv&Low  kcll  Slkclloiv  tjOojv  KTrjcnv,  Ci  for, 
to  speak  shortly,  no  greater  evil,  matching  each  against  each, 
can  possibly  happen  to  a city,  as  adverse  to  its  forming  just 
or  generous  character,”  than  its  being  full  of  silver  and  gold. 

139.  Of  course,  the  Greek  notion  may  be  wrong,  and  ours 
right,  only — ws  tiros  threw — you  can  have  Greek  sculpture 
only  on  that  Greek  theory : shortly  expressed  by  the  words 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Poverty  herself,  in  the  Plutus  of  Aris- 
tophanes “ Tov  ttXovtov  irapt^ji  fitXTLOvas  avSpas,  kcll  tt}V  yvoi^r] v, 
kcll  ryv  ISeav,”  “ I deliver  to  you  better  men  than  the  God  of 
Money  can,  both  in  imagination  and  feature.”  So  on  the 
other  hand,  this  ichthyoid,  reptilian,  or  mono-chondyloid 
ideal  of  the  self-made  man  can  only  be  reached,  universally, 
by  a nation  which  holds  that  poverty,  either  of  purse  or  spirit, 

• — but  especially  the  spiritual  character  of  being  m-cox™  r( ? 
Trvtv/jLCLTi,  is  the  lowest  of  degradations ; and  which  believes 


LIKENESS. 


91 


that  the  desire  of  wealth  is  the  first  of  manly  and  moral  sen- 
timents. As  I have  been  able  to  get  the  popular  ideal  repre- 
sented by  its  own  living  art,  so  I can  give  you  this  popular 
faith  in  its  own  living  words  ; but  in  words  meant  seriously 
and  not  at  all  as  caricature,  from  one  of  our  leading  journals, 
professedly  aesthetic  also  in  its  very  name,  the  Spectator,  of 
August  6th,  1870. 

“ Mr.  Buskin’s  plan,”  it  says,  “ would  make  England  poor, 
in  order  that  she  might  be  cultivated,  and  refined  and  artistic. 
A wilder  proposal  was  never  broached  by  a man  of  ability  ; 
and  it  might  be  regarded  as  a proof  that  the  assiduous  study 
of  art  emasculates  the  intellect,  and  even  the  moral  sense.  Such 
a theory  almost  warrants  the  contempt  with  which  art  is  often 
regarded  by  essentially  intellectual  natures,  like  Proudhon  ” 
(sic).  “Art  is  noble  as  the  flower  of  life,  and  the  creations  of 
a Titian  are  a great  heritage  of  the  race  ; but  if  England  could 
secure  high  art  and  Venetian  glory  of  colour  only  by  the  sacri- 
fice of  her  manufacturing  supremacy,  and  by  the  acceptance  of 
national  poverty , then  the  pursuit  of  such  artistic  achievements 
would  imply  that  we  had  ceased  to  possess  natures  of  manly 
strength,  or  to  know  the  meaning  of  moral  aims.  If  we  must 
choose  between  a Titian  and  a Lancashire  cotton  mill,  then, 
in  the  name  of  manhood  and  of  morality,  give  us  the  cotton 
mill.  Only  the  dilettantism  of  the  studio  ; that  dilettantism 
which  loosens  the  moral  no  less  than  the  intellectual  fibre,  and 
which  is  as  fatal  to  rectitude  of  action  as  to  correctness  of 
reasoning  power,  would  make  a different  choice.” 

You  see  also,  by  this  interesting  and  most  memorable  pas- 
sage, how  completely  the  question  is  admitted  to  be  one  of 
ethics — the  only  real  point  at  issue  being,  whether  this  face 
or  that  is  developed  on  the  truer  moral  principle. 

140.  I assume,  however,  for  the  present,  that  this  Apolline 
type  is  the  kind  of  form  you  wish  to  reach  and  to  represent. 
And  now  observe,  instantly,  the  whole  question  of  manner  of 
imitation  is  altered  for  us.  The  fins  of  the  fish,  the  plumes  of 
the  swan,  and  the  flowing  of  the  Sun-God’s  hair  are  all  repre- 
sented by  incisions — but  the  incisions  do  sufficiently  repre- 
sent the  fin  and  feather, — they  insufficiently  represent  the 


92 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


hair.  If  I chose,  with  a little  more  care  and  labour,  I could 
absolutely  get  the  surface  of  the  scales  and  spines  of  the  fish, 
and  the  expression  of  its  mouth  ; but  no  quantity  of  labour 
would  obtain  the  real  surface  of  a tress  of  Apollo’s  hair,  and 
the  full  expression  of  his  mouth.  So  that  we  are  compelled 
at  once  to  call  the  imagination  to  help  us,  and  say  to  it,  You 
know  what  the  Apollo  Chrysocomes  must  be  like  ; finish  all 
this  for  yourself.  Now,  the  law  under  which  imagination 
works,  is  just  that  of  other  good  workers.  “ You  must  give 
me  clear  orders  ; show  me  what  I have  to  do,  and  where  I am 
to  begin,  and  let  me  alone.  ” And  the  orders  can  be  ..given, 
quite  clearly,  up  to  a certain  point,  in  form  ; but  they  cannot 
be  given  clearly  in  colour,  now  that  the  subject  is  subtle.  All 
beauty  of  this  high  kind  depends  on  harmony  ; let  but  the 
slightest  discord  come  into  it,  and  the  finer  the  thing  is,  the 
more  fatal  will  be  the  flaw.  Now,  on  a flat  surface,  I can 
command  my  colour  to  be  precisely  what  and  wdiere  I mean 
it  to  be  ; on  a round  one  I cannot.  For  all  harmony  depends 
first,  on  the  fixed  proportion  of  the  colour  of  the  light,  to  that 
of  the  relative  shadow  ; and  therefore,  if  I fasten  my  colour,  I 
must  fasten  my  shade.  But  on  a round  surface  the  shadow 
changes  at  every  hour  of  the  day  ; and  therefore,  all  colouring 
which  is  expressive  of  form,  is  impossible  ; and  if  the  form  is 
fine,  (and  here  there  is  nothing  but  what  is  fine),  you  may  bid 
farewell  to  colour. 

141.  Farewell  to  colour  ; that  is  to  say,  if  the  thing  is  to  be 
seen  distinctly,  and  you  have  only  wise  people  to  show  it  to  ; 
but  if  it  is  to  be  seen  indistinctly,  at  a distance,  colour  may 
become  explanatory ; and  if  you  have  simple  people  to  show 
it  to,  colour  may  be  necessary  to  excite  their  imaginations, 
though  not  to  excite  yours.  And  the  art  is  great  always 
by  meeting  its  conditions  in  the  straightest  way  ; and  if  it  is 
to  please  a multitude  of  innocent  and  bluntfy-minded  persons, 
must  exjrress  itself  in  the  terms  that  will  touch  them  ; else  it 
is  not  good.  And  I have  to  trace  for  you  through  the  history 
of  the  past,  and  possibilities  of  the  future,  the  expedients  used 
by  great  sculptors  to  obtain  clearness,  impressiveness,  or 
splendour  ; and  the  manner  of  their  appeal  to  the  people. 


LIKENESS. 


93 

under  various  light  and  shadow,  and  with  reference  to  differ- 
ent degrees  of  public  intelligence  : such  investigation  resol  v- 
^ ing  itself  again  and  again,  as  we  proceed,  into  questions 
absolutely  ethical ; as  for  instance,  whether  colour  is  to  be 
bright  or  dull,  that  is  to  say,  for  a populace  cheerful  or  heart- 
less ; — whether  it  is  to  be  delicate  or  strong,  that  is  to  say, 
for  a populace  attentive  or  careless  ; whether  it  is  to  be  a 
background  like  the  sky,  for  a procession  of  young  men  and 
maidens,  because  your  populace  revere  life — or  the  shadow  of 
a vault  behind  a corpse,  stained  with  drops  of  blackened  blood, 
for  a populace  taught  to  worship  Death.  Every  critical  deter- 
mination of  rightness  depends  on  the  obedience  to  some  ethic 
law,  by  the  most  rational  and,  therefore,  simplest,  means. 
And  you  see  how  it  depends  most,  of  all  things,  on  whether 
you  are  working  for  chosen  persons  or  for  the  mob  ; for  the 
joy  of  the  boudoir,  or  of  the  Borgo.  And  if  for  the  mob, 
whether  the  mob  of  Olympia,  or  of  St.  Antoine.  Phidias, 
showing  his  Jupiter  for  the  first  time,  hides  behind  the 
temple  door  to  listen,  resolved  afterwards,  “ pyO^uv  to 
ayaXfxa  7 r/?os  to  tols  7rAetcrTOis  Sokow,  ov  yap  ryyaro  pitKpay  etVat 
crvpLpov\r)v  Stjulov  too-ovtov”  and  truly,  as  your  people  is,  in 
judgment,  and  in  multitude,  so  must  your  sculpture  be,  in 
glory.  An  elementary  principle  which  has  been  too  long  out 
of  mind. 

142.  I leave  you  to  consider  it,  since,  for  some  time,  we 
shall  not  again  be  able  to  take  up  the  inquiries  to  which  it 
leads.  But,  ultimately,  I do  not  doubt  that  you  will  rest 
satisfied  in  these  following  conclusions  : 

1.  Not  only  sculpture,  but  all  the  other  fine  arts,  must  be 
for  the  people. 

2.  They  must  be  didactic  to  the  people,  and  that  as  their  chief 
end.  The  structural  arts,  didactic  in  their  manner  ; the 
graphic  arts  in  their  matter  also. 

3.  And  chiefly  the  great  representative  and  imaginative  arts, 
that  is  to  say,  the  drama,  and  sculpture,  are  to  teach  what  is 
noble  in  past  history,  and  lovely  in  existing  human  and  or- 
ganic life. 

4.  And  the  test  of  right  manner  of  execution  in  these  arts, 


94 


ABATE  A PENTEL1CL 


is  that  they  strike,  in  the  most  emphatic  manner,  the  rank  of 
popular  minds  to  which  they  are  addressed. 

5.  And  the  test  of  utmost  fineness  in  execution  in  these 
arts,  is  that  they  make  themselves  be  forgotten  in  what  they 
represent ; and  so  fulfil  the  words  of  their  greatest  Master, 

“The  best,  in  this  kind,  are  but  shadows.” 


LECTURE  Y. 

STRUCTURE. 

December , 1870. 

143.  On  previous  occasions  of  addressing  you,  I have  en- 
deavoured to  show  you,  first,  how  sculpture  is  distinguished 
from  other  arts  ; then  its  proper  subjects,  then  its  proper 
method  in  the  realization  of  these  subjects.  To-day,  we 
must,  in  the  fourth  place,  consider  the  means  at  its  command 
for  the  accomplishment  of  these  ends  ; the  nature  of  its  ma- 
terials ; and  the  mechanical  or  other  difficulties  of  their  treat- 
ment. 

And  however  doubtful  we  may  have  remained,  as  to  the 
justice  of  Greek  ideals,  or  propriety  of  Greek  methods  of  rep- 
resenting them,  we  may  be  certain  that  the  example  of  the 
Greeks  will  be  instructive  in  all  practical  matters  relating  to 
this  great  art,  peculiarly  their  own.  I think  even  the  evidence 
I have  already  laid  before  you  is  enough  to  convince  you, 
that  it  was  by  rightness  and  reality,  not  by  idealism  or  delight- 
fulness only,  that  their  minds  were  finally  guided  ; and  I am 
sure  that,  before  closing  the  present  course,  I shall  be  able  so 
far  to  complete  that  evidence,  as  to  prove  to  you  that  the 
commonly  received  notions  of  classic  art  are,  not  only  un- 
founded, but  even  in  many  respects,  directly  contrary  to  the 
truth.  You  are  constantly  told  that  Greece  idealized  what- 
ever she  contemplated.  She  did  the  exact  contrary  : she  real- 
ized and  verified  it.  You  are  constantly  told  she  sought  only 
the  beautiful.  She  sought,  indeed,  with  all  her  heart ; but 


STRUCTURE. 


95 


she  found,  because  she  never  doubted  that  the  search  was  to 
be  consistent  with  propriety  and  common  sense.  And  the 
first  thing  you  will  always  discern  in  Greek  work  is  the  first 
which  you  ought  to  discern  in  all  work  ; namely,  that  the 
object  of  it  has  been  rational,  and  has  been  obtained  by  sim- 
ple and  unostentatious  means. 

144.  “That  the  object  of  the  work  has  been  rational!” 
Consider  how  much  that  implies.  That  it  should  be  by  all 
means  seen  to  have  been  determined  upon,  and  carried 
through,  with  sense  and  discretion  ; these  being  gifts  of  intel- 
lect far  more  precious  than  any  knowledge  of  mathematics,  or 
of  the  mechanical  resources  of  art.  Therefore,  also,  that  it 
should  be  a modest  and  temperate  work,  a structure  fitted  to 
the  actual  state  of  men  ; proportioned  to  their  actual  size,  as 
animals, — to  their  average  strength, — to  their  true  necessities, 
— and  to  the  degree  of  easy  command  they  have  over  the 
forces  and  substances  of  nature. 

145.  You  see  how  much  this  law  excludes  ! All  that  is 
fondly  magnificent,  insolently  ambitious,  or  vainly  difficult. 
There  is,  indeed,  such  a thing  as  Magnanimity  in  design,  but 
never  unless  it  be  joined  also  with  modesty  and  ^uanimity. 
Nothing  extravagant,  monstrous,  strained,  or  singular,  can  be 
structurally  beautiful.  No  towers  of  Babel  envious  of  the 
skies  ; no  pyramids  in  mimicry  of  the  mountains  of  the  earth  ; 
no  streets  that  are  a weariness  to  traverse,  nor  temples  that 
make  pigmies  of  the  worshippers. 

It  is  one  of  the  primal  merits  and  decencies  of  Greek  work 
that  it  was,  on  the  whole,  singularly  small  in  scale,  and  wholly 
within  reach  of  sight,  to  its  finest  details.  And,  indeed,  the 
best  buildings  that  I know  are  thus  modest ; and  some  of 
the  best  are  minute  jewel.<cases  for  sweet  sculpture.  The 
Parthenon  would  hardly  attract  notice,  if  it  were  set  by  the 
Charing  Cross  Railway  Station  : the  Church  of  the  Miracoli, 
at  Venice,  the  Chapel  of  the  Rose,  at  Lucca,  and  the  Chapel 
of  the  Thorn,  at  Pisa,  would  not,  I suppose,  all  three  together, 
fill  the  tenth  part,  cube,  of  a transept  of  the  Crystal  Palace. 
And  they  are  better  so. 

146.  In  the  chapter  on  Power  in  the  “Seven  Lamps  of  Arclii- 


96 


ABATE  A PENTELICL 


tecture,”  I have  stated  what  seems,  at  first,  the  reverse  of  what 
I am  saying  now ; namely,  that  it  is  better  to  have  one  grand 
building  than  any  number  of  mean  ones.  And  that  is  true, 
but  you  cannot  command  grandeur  by  size  till  you  can  com- 
mand grace  in  minuteness  ; and  least  of  all,  remember,  will 
you  so  command  it  to-day,  when  magnitude  has  become  the 
chief  exponent  of  folly  and  misery,  co-ordinate  in  the  fra- 
ternal enormities  of  the  Factory  and  Poorhouse, — the  Bar- 
racks and  Hospital.  And  the  final  law  in  this  matter  is,  that 
if  you  require  edifices  only  for  the  grace  and  health  of  man- 
kind, and  build  them  without  pretence  and  without  chicanerv, 
they  will  be  sublime  on  a modest  scale,  and  lovely  with  little 
decoration. 

147.  From  these  principles  of  simplicity  and  temperance, 
two  very  severely  fixed  laws  of  construction  follow  ; namely, 
first,  that  our  structure,  to  be  beautiful,  must  be  produced 
with  tools  of  men  ; and  secondly,  that  it  must  be  composed 
of  natural  substances.  First,  I say,  produced  with  tools  of 
men.  All  fine  art  requires  the  application  of  the  whole 
strength  and  subtlety  of  the  body,  so  that  such  art  is  not  pos- 
sible to  any  sickly  person,  but  involves  the  action  and  force  of 
a strong  man’s  arm  from  the  shoulder,  as  wrell  as  the  delicatest 
touch  of  his  finger  : and  it  is  the  evidence  that  this  full  and 
fine  strength  has  been  spent  on  it  which  makes  the  art  execu- 
tively noble  ; so  that  no  instrument  must  be  used,  habitually, 
which  is  either  too  heavy  to  be  delicately  restrained,  or  too  small 
and  weak  to  transmit  a vigorous  impulse  ; much  less  any 
mechanical  aid,  such  as  would  render  the  sensibility  of  the 
fingers  ineffectual.* 

148.  Of  course,  any  kind  of  work  in  glass,  or  in  metal,  on  a 

* Nothing  is  more  wonderful,  or  mbre  disgraceful  among  the  forms 
of  ignorance  engendered  by  modern  vulgar  occupations  in  pursuit  of 
gain,  than  the  unconsciousness,  now  total,  that  fine  art  is  essentially 
Athletic.  I received  a letter  from  Birmingham,  some  little  time  since, 
inviting  me  to  see  how  much,  in  glass  manufacture,  “ machinery 
excelled  rude  hand  work.”  The  writer  had  not  the  remotest  concep- 
tion that  he  might  as  well  have  asked  me  to  come  and  see  a mechanical 
boat-race  rowed  by  automata,  and  “ how  much  machinery  excelled  rude 
arm- work. 


STRUCTURE. 


97 


large  scale,  involves  some  painful  endurance  of  heat ; and 
working  in  clay,  some  habitual  endurance  of  cold  ; but  the 
point  beyond  which  the  effort  must  not  be  carried  is  marked 
by  loss  of  power  of  manipulation.  As  long  as  the  eyes  and 
fingers  have  complete  command  of  the  material  (as  a glass 
blower  has,  for  instance,  in  doing  fine  ornamental  work) — 
the  law  is  not  violated  ; but  all  our  great  engine  and  furnace 
work,  in  gun-making  and  the  like,  is  degrading  to  the  intel- 
lect ; and  no  nation  can  long  persist  in  it  without  losing  many 
of  its  human  faculties.  Nay,  even  the  use  of  machinery,  other 
than  the  common  rope  and  pully,  for  the  lifting  of  weights,  is 
degrading  to  architecture  ; the  invention  of  expedients  for  the 
raising  of  enormous  stones  has  always  been  a characteristic  of 
partly  savage  or  corrupted  races.  A block  of  marble  not 
larger  than  a cart  with  a couple  of  oxen  could  carry,  and  a 
cross-beam,  with  a couple  of  pulleys,  raise,  is  as  large  as 
should  generally  be  used  in  any  building.  The  employment 
of  large  masses  is  sure  to  lead  to  vulgar  exhibitions  of  geomet- 
rical arrangement,*  and  to  draw  away  the  attention  from  the 
sculpture.  In  general,  rocks  naturally  break  into  such  pieces 
as  the  human  beings  that  have  to  build  with  them  can  easily 
lift,  and  no  larger  should  be  sought  for. 

149.  In  this  respect,  and  in  many  other  subtle  ways,  the 
law  that  the  work  is  to  be  with  tools  of  men  is  connected 
with  the  farther  condition  of  its  modesty,  that  it  is  to  be 
wrought  in  substance  provided  by  Nature,  and  to  have  a 
faithful  respect  to  all  the  essential  qualities  of  such  substance. 

And  here  I must  ask  your  attention  to  the  idea,  and,  more 
than  idea, — the  fact,  involved  in  that  infinitely  misused  term, 
“ Providentia,”  when  applied  to  the  Divine  Power.  In  its 
truest  sense  and  scholarly  use,  it  is  a human  virtue,  UpopL^Oeia  ; 
the  personal  type  of  it  is  in  Prometheus,  and  all  the  first 
power  of  Tey vr),  is  from  him,  as  compared  to  the  weakness  of 
days  when  men  without  foresight  “ « fcvpov  Ulkyj  irdvraT  But, 
so  far  as  we  use  the  word  “ Providence  ” as  an  attribute  of  the 
Maker  and  Giver  of  all  things,  it  does  not  mean  that  in  a 

*Such  as  the  sculptureless  arch  of  Waterloo  Bridge,  for  instance: 
referred  to  in  the  Third  Lecture,  § 84. 

7 


98 


A RAT R A PENT  ELI  CI. 


shipwreck  He  takes  care  of  the  passengers  who  are  to  be  saved 
and  takes  none  of  those  who  are  to  be  drowned  ; but  it  does 
mean  that  every  race  of  creatures  is  born  into  the  world  un- 
der circumstances  of  approximate  adaptation  to  its  necessities  ; 
and,  beyond  all  others,  the  ingenious  and  observant  race  of 
man  is  surrounded  with  elements  naturally  good  for  his  food, 
pleasant  to  his  sight,  and  suitable  for  the  subjects  of  his  in- 
genuity ; — the  stone,  metal,  and  clay  of  the  earth  he  walks 
upon  lending  themselves  at  once  to  his  hand,  for  all  manner 
of  workmanship. 

150.  Thus,  his  truest  respect  for  the  law  of  the  entire  crea- 
tion is  shown  by  his  making  the  most  of  what  he  can  get  most 
easily  ; and  there  is  no  virtue  of  art,  nor  application  of  com- 
mon sense,  more  sacredly  necessary  than  this  respect  to  the 
beauty  of  natural  substance,  and  the  ease  of  local  use  ; neither 
are  there  any  other  precepts  of  construction  so  vital  as  these 
— that  you  show  all  the  strength  of  your  material,  tempt  none 
of  its  weaknesses,  and  do  with  it  only  what  can  be  simply  and 
permanently  done. 

151.  Thus,  all  good  building  will  be  with  rocks,  or  pebbles, 
or  burnt  clay,  but  with  no  artificial  compound ; all  good  paint- 
ing, with  common  oils  and  pigments  on  common  canvas,  paper, 
plaster,  or  wood, — admitting,  sometimes  for  precious  work, 
precious  things,  but  all  applied  in  a simple  and  visible  way. 
The  highest  imitative  art  should  not,  indeed,  at  first  sight,  call 
attention  to  the  means  of  it ; but  even  that,  at  length,  should 
do  so  distinctly,  and  provoke  the  observer  to  take  pleasure  in 
seeing  how  completely  the  workman  is  master  of  the  particu- 
lar material  he  has  used,  and  how  beautiful  and  desirable  a 
substance  it  was,  for  work  of  that  kind.  In  oil  painting  its 
unctious  quality  is  to  be  delighted  in  ; in  fresco,  its  chalky 
quality  ; in  glass,  its  transparency  ; in  wood,  its  grain  ; in 
marble,  its  softness ; in  porphyry,  its  hardness  ; in  iron,  its 
toughness.  In  a flint  country,  one  should  feel  the  delightful- 
ness of  having  flints  to  pick  up,  and  fasten  together  into  rug- 
ged walls.  In  a marble  country  one  should  be  always  more 
and  more  astonished  at  the  exquisite  colour  and  structure  of 
marble  ; in  a slate  country  one  should  feel  as  if  every  rock 


STRUCTURE. 


99 


cleft  itself  only  for  tlie  sake  of  being  built  with  con- 
veniently. 

152.  Now,  for  sculpture,  there  are,  briefly,  two  materials — 
Clay,  and  Stone  ; for  glass  is  only  a clay  that  gets  clear  and 
brittle  as  it  cools,  and  metal  a clay  that  gets  opaque  and 
tough  as  it  cools.  Indeed,  the  true  use  of  gold  in  this  world 
is  only  as  a very  pretty  and  very  ductile  clay,  which  you  can 
spread  as  flat  as  you  like,  spin  as  fine  as  you  like,  and  which 
will  neither  crack,  nor  tarnish. 

All  the  arts  of  sculpture  in  clay  may  be  summed  up  under 
the  word  “ Plastic,”  and  all  of  those  in  stone,  under  the  word 
“ Glyptic.” 

153.  Sculpture  in  clay  will  accordingly  include  all  cast 
brick-work,  pottery,  and  tile-work  * — a somewhat  important 
branch  of  human  skill.  Next  to  the  potter’s  work,  you  have 
all  the  arts  in  porcelain,  glass,  enamel,  and  metal ; everything^ 
that  is  to  say,  playful  and  familiar  in  design,  much  of  what  is 
most  felicitously  inventive,  and,  in  bronze  or  gold,  most  pre- 
cious and  permanent. 

154.  Sculpture  in  stone,  whether  granite,  gem,  or  marble, 
while  we  accurately  use  the  general  term  “ glyptic  ” for  it, 
may  be  thought  of  with,  perhaps,  the  most  clear  force  under 
the  English  word  “ engraving/’  Eor,  from  the  mere  angular 
incision  which  the  Greek  consecrated  in  the  triglyphs  of  his 
greatest  order  of  architecture,  grow  forth  all  the  arts  of  bas- 
relief,  and  methods  of  localized  groups  of  sculpture  connected 
with  each  other  and  with  architecture  : as,  in  another  direc- 
tion, the  arts  of  engraving  and  wood-cutting  themselves. 

155.  Over  all  this  vast  field  of  human  skill  the  laws  which  I 
have  enunciated  to  you  rule  with  inevitable  authority,  embrac- 
ing the  greatest,  and  consenting  to  the  humblest,  exertion  ; 
strong  to  repress  the  ambition  of  nations,  if  fantastic  and  vain, 
but  gentle  to  approve  the  efforts  of  children,  made  in  accord- 
ance with  the  visible  intention  of  the  Maker  of  all  flesh,  and 

* It  is  strange,  at  this  day,  to  think  of  the  relation  of  the  Athenian 
Ceramicus  to  the  French  Tile-fields,  Tileries,  or  Tuileries  ; and  how 
tlie.se  last  may  yet  become — have  already  partly  become  — “the  Potter’s 
field,”  blood-bouglit.  (December,  1870.) 


100 


ARA  TEA  PENTELIC1. 


the  Giver  of  all  Intelligence.  These  laws,  therefore,  I now  re* 
peat,  and  beg  of  you  to  observe  them  as  irrefragable. 

1.  That  the  work  is  to  be  with  tools  of  men. 

2.  That  it  is  to  be  in  natural  materials. 

3.  That  it  is  to  exhibit  the  virtues  of  those  materials,  and 
aim  at  no  quality  inconsistent  with  them. 

4.  That  its  temper  is  to  be  quiet  and  gentle,  in  harmony 
with  common  needs,  and  in  consent  to  common  intelli- 
gence. 

We  will  now  observe  the  bearing  of  these  laws  on  the  ele- 
mentary conditions  of  the  art  at  present  under  discussion. 

156.  There  is,  first,  work  in  baked  clay,  which  contracts  as 
it  dries,  and  is  very  easily  frangible.  Then  you  must  put  no 
work  into  it  requiring  niceness  in  dimension,  nor  any  so  elabo- 
rate that  it  would  be  a great  loss  if  it  were  broken,  but  as  the 
clay  yields  at  once  to  the  hand,  and  the  sculptor  can  do  any- 
thing with  it  he  likes^  it  is  a material  for  him  to  sketch  with 
and  play  with, — to  record  his  fancies  in,  before  they  escape 
him — and  to  express  roughly,  for  people  who  can  enjoy  such 
sketches,  what  he  has  not  time  to  complete  in  marble.  The 
clay,  being  ductile,  lends  itself  to  all  softness  of  line  ; being 
easily  frangible,  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  give  it  sharp  edges, 
so  that  a blunt  and  massive  rendering  of  grace idl  gesture  will 
be  its  natural  function  ; but  as  it  can  be  pinched,  or  pulled, 
or  thrust  in  a moment  into  projection  which  it  would  take 
hours  of  chiselling  to  get  in  stone,  it  will  also  properly  be 
used  for  all  fantastic  and  grotesque  form,  not  involving  sharp 
edges.  Therefore,  what  is  true  of  chalk  and  charcoal,  for 
painters,  is  equally  true  of  clay,  for  sculptors ; they  are  all 
most  precious  materials  for  true  masters,  but  tempt  the  false 
ones  into  fatal  license  ; and  to  judge  rightly  of  terra-cotta 
work  is  a far  higher  reach  of  skill  in  sculpture-criticism  than 
to  distinguish  the  merits  of  a finished  statue. 

157.  We  have,  secondly,  work  in  bronze,  iron,  gold,  and 
other  metals  ; in  which  the  laws  of  structure  are  still  more 
definite. 

All  kinds  of  twisted  and  wreathen  work  on  every  scale  be- 
come delightful  when  wrought  in  ductile  or  tenacious  metal  ° 


STRUCTURE. 


101 


but  metal  which  is  to  be  hammered  into  form  separates  itself 
into  two  great  divisions — solid,  and  flat. 

(A.)  In  solid  metal  work,  i.  e.,  metal  cast  thick  enough  to 
resist  bending,  whether  it  be  hollow  or  not,  violent  and  various 
projection  may  be  admitted,  which  would  be  offensive  in  mar- 
ble ; but  no  sharp  edges,  because  it  is  difficult  to  produce 
them  with  the  hammer.  But  since  the  permanence  of  the 
material  justifies  exquisiteness  of  workmanship,  whatever  del- 
icate ornamentation  can  be  wrought  with  rounded  surfaces 
may  be  advisedly  introduced  ; and  since  the  colour  of  bronze 
or  any  other  metal  is  not  so  pleasantly  representative  of  flesh 
as  that  of  marble,  a wise  sculptor  will  depend  less  on  flesh 
contour,  and  more  on  picturesque  accessories,  which,  though 
they  would  be  vulgar  if  attempted  in  stone,  are  rightly  enter- 
taining in  bronze  or  silver.  Yerrochio’s  statue 
of  Colleone  at  Venice,  Cellini’s  Perseus  at 
Florence,  and  Ghiberti’s  gates  at  Florence,  are 
models  of  bronze  treatment. 

(B.)  When  metal  is  beaten  thin,  it  becomes 
what  is  technically  called  “plate,”  (th  e flattened 
thing)  and  may  be  treated  advisabty  in  two  ways  ; 
one,  by  beating  it  out  into  bosses,  the  other  by 
cutting  it  into  strips  and  ramifications.  The 
vast  schools  of  goldsmith’s  work  and  of  iron  dec- 
oration, founded  on  these  two  principles,  have 
had  the  most  powerful  influences  over  general 
taste  in  all  ages  and  countries.  One  of  the  sim- 
plest and  most  interesting  elementary  examples 
of  the  treatment  of  flat  metal  by  cutting  is  the 
common  branched  iron  bar,  Fig.  8,  used  to  close 
small  apertures  in  countries  possessing  any  good 
primitive  style  of  ironwork,  formed  by  alternate  cuts  on  its 
sides,  and  the  bending  down  of  the  several  portions.  The 
ordinary  domestic  window  balcony  of  Verona  is  formed  by 
mere  ribands  of  iron,  bent  into  curves  as  studiously  refined 
as  those  of  a Greek  vase,  and  decorated  merely  by  their  own 
terminations  in  spiral  volutes. 

All  cast  work  in  metal,  unfinished  by  hand,  is  inadmissible 


Fig.  a 


102 


A RAT  BA  PENTELIGI. 


in  any  school  of  living  art,  since  it  cannot  possess  the  perfec- 
tion of  form  due  to  a permanent  substance  ; and  the  continual 
sight  of  it  is  destructive  of  the  faculty  of  taste  : but  metal 
stamped  with  precision,  as  in  coins,  is  to  sculpture  what  en- 
graving is  to  painting. 

158.  Thirdly.  Stone-sculpture  divides  itself  into  three 
schools  : one  in  very  hard  material ; one  in  very  soft,  and  one 
in  that  of  centrally  useful  consistence. 

A.  The  virtue  of  work  in  hard  material  is  the  expression  of 
form  in  shallow  relief,  or  in  broad  contours  ; deep  cutting  in 
hard  material  is  inadmissible,  and  the  art,  at  once  pompous 
and  trivial,  of  gem  engraving,  has  been  in  the  last  degree 
destructive  of  the  honour  and  service  of  sculpture. 

B.  The  virtue  of  work  in  soft  material  is  deep  cutting,  with 
studiously  graceful  disposition  of  the  masses  of  light  and 
shade.  The  greater  number  of  flamboyant  churches  of  France 
are  cut  out  of  an  adhesive  chalk  ; and  the  fantasy  of  their 
latest  decoration  was,  in  great  part,  induced  by  the  facility  of 
obtaining  contrast  of  black  space,  undercut,  with  white  tracery 
easily  left  in  sweeping  and  interwoven  rods — the  lavish  use  of 
wood  in  domestic  architecture  materially  increasing  the  habit 
of  delight  in  branched  complexity  of  line.  These  points, 
however,  I must  reserve  for  illustration  in  my  lectures  on  ar- 
chitecture. To-day,  I shall  limit  myself  to  the  illustration  of 
elementary  sculptural  structure  in  the  best  material ; — that  is 
to  say,  in  crystalline  marble,  neither  soft  enough  to  encourage 
the  caprice  of  the  workman,  nor  hard  enough  to  resist  his 
will. 

159.  C.  By  the  true  “ Providence  ” of  Nature,  the  rock 
which  is  thus  submissive  has  been  in  some  places  stained  with 
the  fairest  colours,  and  in  others  blanched  into  the  fairest  ab- 
sence of  colour,  that  can  be  found  to  give  harmony  to  inlay- 
ing, or  dignity  to  form.  The  possession  by  the  Greeks  of 
their  \cvk6s  \l 60s  was  indeed  the  first  circumstance  regulating 
the  development  of  their  art ; it  enabled  them  at  once  to  ex- 
press their  passion  for  light  by  executing  the  faces,  hands,  and 
feet  of  their  dark  wooden  statues  in  white  marble,  so  that 
what  we  look  upon  only  with  pleasure  for  fineness  of  texture 


STRUCTURE. 


103 


was  to  them  an  imitation  of  the  luminous  body  of  the  deity 
shining  from  behind  its  dark  robes ; and  ivory  afterwards 
is  employed  in  their  best  statues  for  its  yet  more  soft  and 
flesh-like  brightness,  receptive  also  of  the  most  delicate  colour 
— (therefore  to  this  day  the  favourite  ground  of  miniature 
painters).  In  like  manner,  the  existence  of  quarries  of  peach- 
coloured  marble  within  twelve  miles  of  Yerona,  and  of  white 
marble  and  green  serpentine  between  Pisa  and  Genoa,  defined 
the  manner  both  of  sculpture  and  architecture  for  all  the 
Gothic  buildings  of  Italy.  No  subtlety  of  education  could 
have  formed  a high  school  of  art  without  these  materials. 

160.  Next  to  the  colour,  the  fineness  of  substance  which 
will  take  a perfectly  sharp  edge,  is  essential ; and  this  not 
merely  to  admit  fine  delineation  in  the  sculpture  itself,  but  to 
secure  a delightful  precision  in  placing  the  blocks  of  which  it 
is  composed.  For  the  possession  of  too  fine  marble,  as  far  as 
regards  the  work  itself,  is  a temptation  instead  of  an  advantage 
to  an  inferior  sculptor  ; and  the  abuse  of  the  facility  of  under- 
cutting, especially  of  undercutting  so  as  to  leave  profiles  de- 
fined by  an  edge  against  shadow,  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of 
decline  of  style  in  such  encrusted  bas-reliefs  as  those  of  the 
Certosa  of  Pavia  and  its  contemporary  monuments.  But  no 
undue  temptation  ever  exists  as  to  the  fineness  of  block  fit- 
ting ; nothing  contributes  to  give  so  pure  and  healthy  a tone 
to  sculpture  as  the  attention  of  the  builder  to  the  jointing  of 
his  stones ; and  his  having  both  the  power  to  make  them  fit  so 
perfectly  as  not  to  admit  of  the  slightest  portion  of  cement 
showing  externally,  and  the  skill  to  insure,  if  needful,  and  to 
suggest  always,  their  stability  in  cementiess  construction. 
Plate  X.  represents  a piece  of  entirely  fine  Lombardic  build- 
ing, the  central  portion  of  the  arch  in  the  Duomo  of  Verona, 
which  corresponds  to  that  of  the  porch  of  San  Zenone,  repre- 
sented in  Plate  I.  In  both  these  pieces  of  building,  the  only 
line  that  traces  the  architrave  round  the  arch,  is  that  of  the 
masonry  joint ; yet  this  line  is  drawn  with  extremes t subtlety, 
with  intention  of  delighting  the  eye  by  its  relation  of  varied 
curvature  to  the  arch  itself  ; and  it  is  just  as  much  considered 
as  the  finest  pen-line  of  a Raphael  drawing.  Every  joint  of 


104 


ABATE  A PENT  ELI  Cl 


the  stone  is  used,  in  like  manner,  as  a thin  black  line,  which 
the  slightest  sign  of  cement  would  spoil  like  a blot.  And  so 
proud  is  the  builder  of  his  fine  jointing,  and  so  fearless  of 
any  distortion  or  strain  spoiling  the  adjustment  afterwards, 
that  in  one  place  he  runs  his  joint  quite  gratuitously  through 
a bas-relief,  and  gives  the  keystone  its  only  sign  of  pre-emi- 
nence by  the  minute  inlaying  of  the  head  of  the  Lamb,  into 
the  stone  of  the  course  above. 

161.  Proceeding  from  this  fine  jointing  to  fine  draughts- 
manship, you  have,  in  the  very  outset  and  earliest  stage  of 
sculpture,  your  flat  stone  surface  given  you  as  a sheet  of  white 
paper,  on  which  you  are  required  to  produce  the  utmost  effect 
you  can  with  the  simplest  means,  cutting  away  as  little  of  the 
stone  as  may  be,  to  save  both  time  and  trouble  ; and,  above 
all,  leaving  the  block  itself,  when  shaped,  as  solid  as  you  can, 
that  its  surface  may  better  resist  weather,  and  the  carved  parts 
be  as  much  protected  as  possible  by  the  masses  left  around 
them. 

162.  The  first  thing  to  be  done  is  clearly  to  trace  the  out- 
line of  subject  with  an  incision  approximating  in  section  to 
that  of  the  furrow  of  a plough,  only  more  equal-sided.  A fine 
sculptor  strikes  it,  as  his  chisel  leans,  freely,  on  marble  ; an 
Egyptian,  in  hard  rock,  cuts  it  sharp,  as  in  cuneiform  inscrip- 
tions. In  any  case,  you  have  a result  somewhat  like  the 
upper  figure,  Plate  XL,  in  which  I show  you  the  most  ele- 
mentary indication  of  form  possible,  by  cutting  the  outline  of 
the  typical  archaic  Greek  head  with  an  incision  like  that  of  a 
Greek  triglypli,  only  not  so  precise  in  edge  or  slope,  as  it  is  to 
be  modified  afterwards. 

163.  Now,  the  simplest  thing  we  can  do  next,  is  to  round 
off  the  flat  surface  within  the  incision,  and  put  what  form  we 
can  get  into  the  feebler  projection  of  it  thus  obtained.  The 
Egyptians  do  this,  often  with  exquisite  skill,  and  then,  as  I 
showed  you  in  a former  lecture,  colour  the  whole — using  the 
incision  as  an  outline.  Such  a method  of  treatment  is  capable 
of  good  service  in  representing,  at  little  cost  of  pains,  subjects 
in  distant  effect,  and  common,  or  merely  picturesque,  subjects 
even  near.  To  show  you  what  it  is  capable  of,  and  what 


STRUCTURE. 


105 


coloured  sculpture  would  be  in  its  rudest  type,  I have  pre- 
pared the  coloured  relief  of  the  John  Dory  * as  a natural  his- 
tory drawing  for  distant  effect.  You  know,  also,  that  I meant 
him  to  be  ugly — as  ugly  as  any  creature  can  well  be.  In 
time,  I hope  to  show  you  prettier  things — peacocks  and  king- 
fishers,— butterflies  and  flowers,  on  grounds  of  gold,  and  the 
like,  as  they  were  in  Byzantine  work.  I shall  expect  you,  in 
right  use  of  your  aesthetic  faculties,  to  like  those  better  than 
what  I show  you  to-day.  But  it  is  now  a question  of  method 
only  ; and  if  you  will  look,  after  the  lecture,  first  at  the  mere 
white  relief,  and  then  see  how  much  may  be  gained  by  a few 
dashes  of  colour,  such  as  a practised  workman  could  lay  in  a 
quarter  of  an  hour, — the  whole  forming,  if  well  done,  almost  a 
deceptive  image — you  will,  at  least,  have  the  range  of  power 
in  Egyptian  sculpture  clearly  expressed  to  you. 

164.  But  for  fine  sculpture,  we  must  advance  by  far  other 
methods.  If  we  carve  the  subject  with  real  delicacy,  the  cast 
shadow  of  the  incision  will  interfere  with  its  outline,  so  that, 
for  representation  of  beautiful  things,  you  must  clear  away 
the  ground  about  it,  at  all  events  for  a little  distance.  As  the 
law  of  work  is  to  use  the  least  pains  possible,  you  clear  it  only 
just  as  far  back  as  you  need,  and  then  for  the  sake  of  order 
and  finish,  you  give  the  space  a geometrical  outline.  By  tak- 
ing, in  this  case,  the  simplest  I can, — a circle, — I can  clear 
the  head  with  little  labor  in  the  removal  of  surface  round  it  ; 
(see  the  lower  figure  in  Plate  XI.) 

165.  Notv,  these  are  the  first  terms  of  all  well-constructed 
bas-relief.  The  mass  you  have  to  treat  consists  of  a piece  of 
stone,  which,  however  you  afterwards  carve  it,  can  but,  at  its 
most  projecting  point,  r#ach  the  level  of  the  external  plane 
surface  out  of  which  it  was  mapped,  and  defined  by  a depres- 
sion round  it  ; that  depression  being  at  first  a mere  trench, 
then  a moat  of  certain  width,  of  which  the  outer  sloping  bank 
is  in  contact,  as  a limiting  geometrical  line,  with  the  laterally 
salient  portions  of  sculpture.  This,  I repeat,  is  the  primal 

* Tliis  relief  is  now  among  the  other  casts  which  I have  placed  in  the 
lower  school  in  the  University  galleries. 


106 


ARATRA  PENTELICL 


construction  of  good  bas-relief,  implying,  first,  perfect  pro- 
tection to  its  surface  from  any  transverse  blow,  and  a geo- 
metrically limited  space  to  be  occupied  by  the  design,  into 
which  it  shall  pleasantly  (and  as  you  shall  ultimately  see, 
ingeniously,)  contract  itself:  implying,  secondly,  a determined 
depth  of  projection,  which  it  shall  rarely  reach,  and  never  ex- 
ceed : and  implying,  finally,  the  production  of  the  whole  jfiece 
with  the  least  possible  labor  of  chisel  and  loss  of  stone. 

166.  And  these,  which  are  the  first,  are  very  nearly  the  last 
constructive  laws  of  sculpture.  You  will  be  surprised  to  find 
how  much  they  include,  and  how  much  of  minor  propriety  in 
treatment  their  observance  involves. 

In  a very  interesting  essay  on  the  architecture  of  the  Par- 
thenon, by  the  professor  of  architecture  of  the  Ecole  Polytech- 
nique, M.  Emile  Boutmy,  you  will  find  it  noticed  that  the 
Greeks  do  not  usually  weaken,  by  carving,  the  constructive 
masses  of  their  building  ; but  put  their  chief  sculpture  in  the 
empty  spaces  between  the  triglyphs,  or  beneath  the  roof. 
This  is  true  ; but  in  so  doing,  they  merely  build  their  panel 
instead  of  carving  it ; they  accept  no  less  than  the  Goths,  the 
laws  of  recess  and  limitation,  as  being  vital  to  the  safety  and 
dignity  of  their  design  ; and  their  noblest  recumbent  statues 
are,  constructively,  the  fillings  of  the  acute  extremity  of  a 
panel  in  the  form  of  an  obtusely  summitted  triangle. 

167.  In  gradual  descent  from  that  severest  type,  you  will 
find  that  an  immense  quantity  of  sculpture  of  all  times  and 
styles  may  be  generally  embraced  under  the  notion  of  a mass 
hewn  out  of,  or,  at  least,  placed  in,  a panel  or  recess,  deepen- 
ing, it  may  be,  into  a niche  ; the  sculpture  being  always  de- 
signed with  reference  to  its  position  in  such  recess  ; and, 
therefore,  to  the  effect  of  the  building  out  of  which  the  re- 
cess is  hewn. 

But,  for  the  sake  of  simplifying  our  inquiry,  I will  at  first 
suppose  no  surrounding  protective  ledge  to  exist,  and  that  the 
area  of  stone  we  have  to  deal  with  is  simply  a flat  slab,  extant 
from  a flat  surface  depressed  all  round  it. 

168.  A flat  slab,  observe.  The  flatness  of  surface  is  essen- 
tial to  the  problem  of  bas-relief.  The  lateral  limit  of  the 


STRUCTURE. 


107 


panel  may,  or  may  not,  be  required  ; but  the  vertical  limit  of 
surface  must  be  expressed  ; and  the  art  of  bas-relief  is  to 
give  the  effect  of  true  form  on  that  condition.  For  observe, 
if  nothing  more  were  needed  than  to  make  first  a cast  of  a 
solid  form,  then  cut  it  in  half,  and  apply  the  half  of  it  to  the 
flat  surface  ; — if,  for  instance,  to  carve  a bas-relief  of  an  ap- 
ple, all  I had  to  do  was  to  cut  my  sculpture  of  the  whole  apple 
in  half,  and  pin  it  to  the  wall,  any  ordinary  trained  sculptor, 
or  even  a mechanical  workman,  could  produce  bas-relief ; 
but  the  business  is  to  carve  a round  thing  out  of  a flat  thing ; 
to  carve  an  apple  out  of  a biscuit ! — to  conquer,  as  a subtle 
Florentine  has  here  conquered,*  his  marble,  so  as  not  only  to 
get  motion  into  what  is  most  rigidly  fixed,  but  to  get  bound- 
lessness into  what  is  most  narrowly  bounded  ; and  carve  Ma- 
donna and  Child,  rolling  clouds,  flying  angels,  and  space  of 
heavenly  air  behind  all,  out  of  a film  of  stone  not  the  third  of 
an  inch  thick  where  it  is  thickest. 

169.  Carried,  however,  to  such  a degree  of  subtlety  as  this, 
and  with  so  ambitious  and  extravagant  aim,  bas-relief  be- 
comes a tour-de-force  ; and,  you  know,  I have  just  told  you 
all  tours-de-force  are  wrong.  The  true  law  of  bas-relief  is  to 
begin  with  a depth  of  incision  proportioned  justly  to  the  dis- 
tance of  the  observer  and  the  character  of  the  subject,  and  out 
of  that  rationally  determined  depth,  neither  increased  for  os- 
tentation of  effect,  nor  diminished  for  ostentation  of  skill,  to 
do  the  utmost  that  will  be  easily  visible  to  an  observer,  sup- 
posing him  to  give  an  average  human  amount  of  attention, 
but  not  to  peer  into,  or  critically  scrutinize  the  work. 

170.  I cannot  arrest  you  to  day  by  the  statement  of  any  of 
the  laws  of  sight  and  distance  which  determine  the  proper 
depth  of  bas-relief.  Suppose  that  depth  fixed  ; then  observe 
what  a pretty  problem,  or,  rather,  continually  varying  cluster 
of  problems,  will  be  offered  to  us.  You  might,  at  first,  imag- 
ine that,  given  what  we  may  call  our  scale  of  solidity,  or  scale 
of  depth,  the  diminution  from  nature  would  be  in  regular 

* The  reference  is  to  a cast  from  a small  and  low  relief  of  Florentine 
work  in  the  Kensington  Museum. 


108 


ABATE  A PENTEL1GI. 


proportion,  as  for  instance,  if  the  real  depth  of  your  subject 
be,  suppose  a foot,  and  the  depth  of  your  bas-relief  an  inch, 
then  the  parts  of  the  real  subject  which  were  six  inches  round 
the  side  of  it  would  be  carved,  you  might  imagine,  at  the 
depth  of  half-an-inch,  and  so  the  whole  thing*  mechanically 
reduced  to  scale.  But  not  a bit  of  it.  Here  is  a Greek  bas- 
relief  of  a chariot  with  two  horses  (upper  figure,  Plate  XXI). 
Your  whole  subject  has  therefore  the  depth  of  two  horses  side 
by  side,  say  six  or  eight  feet.  Your  bas-relief  has,  on  the 
scale,*  say  the  depth  of  the  third  of  an  inch.  Now,  if  you 
gave  only  the  sixth  of  an  inch  for  the  depth  of  the  off  horse, 
and,  dividing  him  again,  only  the  twelfth  of  an  inch  for  that 
of  each  foreleg,  you  would  make  him  look  a mile  away  from 
the  other,  and  his  owui  forelegs  a mile  apart.  Actually,  the 
Greek  has  made  the  near  leg  of  the  off  horse  project  much  be- 
yond the  off  leg  of  the  near  horse ; and  has  put  nearly  the 
whole  depth  and  power  of  his  relief  into  the  breast  of  the  off 
horse,  while  for  the  whole  distance  from  the  head  of  the  near- 
est to  the  neck  of  the  other,  he  has  allowed  himself  onty  a 
shallow  line  ; knowing  that,  if  he  deepened  that,  he  would 
give  the  nearest  horse  the  look  of  having  a thick  nose  ; where- 
as, by  keeping  that  line  down,  he  has  not  only  made  the  head 
itself  more  delicate,  but  detached  it  from  the  other  by  giving 
no  cast  shadow,  and  left  the  shadow7-  below  to  serve  for  thick- 
ness of  breast,  cutting  it  as  sharp  down  as  he  possibly  can,  to 
make  it  bolder. 

171.  Here  is  a fine  piece  of  business  we  have  got  into ! 
— even  supposing  that  all  this  selection  and  adaptation  were 
to  be  contrived  under  constant  laws,  and  related  only  to  the 
expression  of  given  forms.  But  the  Greek  sculptor,  all  this 
while,  is  not  only  debating  and  deciding  how7  to  show  what 
he  wants,  but,  much  more,  debating  and  deciding  what,  as  he 
can’t  show  everything,  he  w7ill  choose  to  show  at  all.  Thus, 
being  himself  interested,  and  supposing  that  you  will  be,  in 

* The  actual  bas-relief  is  on  a coin,  and  the  projection  not  above  the 
twentieth  of  an  inch,  but  I magnified  it  in  photograph,  for  this  Lecture, 
so  as  to  represent  a relief  with  about  the  third  of  an  inch  for  maximum 
projection. 


STRUCTURE. 


109 


the  manner  of  the  driving,  he  takes  great  pains  to  carve  the 
reins,  to  show  you  where  they  are  knotted,  and  how  thfey  are 
fastened  round  the  driver’s  waist  (you  recollect  how  Hippoly- 
tus  was  lost  by  doing  that),  but  he  does  not  care  the  least  bit 
about  the  chariot,  and  having  rather  more  geometry  than  he 
likes  in  the  cross  and  circle  of  one  wheel  of  it,  entirely  omits 
the  other  ! 

172.  I think  you  must  see  by  this  time  that  the  sculptor’s 
is  not  quite  a trade  which  you  can  teach  like  brickmaking ; 
nor  its  produce  an  article  of  which  you  can  supply  any  quan- 
tity “ demanded  ” for  the  next  railroad  waiting-room.  It  may 
perhaps,  indeed,  seem  to  you  that,  in  the  difficulties  thus  pre- 
sented by  it,  bas-relief  involves  more  direct  exertion  of  intel- 
lect than  finished  solid  sculpture.  It  is  not  so,  however.  The 
questions  involved  by  bas-relief  are  of  a more  curious  and 
amusing  kind,  requiring  great  variety  of  expedients  ; though 
none  except  such  as  a true  workmanly  instinct  delights  in  in- 
venting and  invents  easily  ; but  design  in  solid  sculpture  in- 
volves considerations  of  weight  in  mass,  of  balance,  of  per- 
spective and  opposition,  in  projecting  forms,  and  of  restraint 
for  those  which  must  not  project,  such  as  none  but  the  great- 
est masters  have  ever  completely  solved  ; and  they,  not  always  ; 
the  difficulty  of  arranging  the  composition  so  as  to  be  agree- 
able from  points  of  view  on  all  sides  of  it,  being,  itself,  arduous 
enough. 

173.  Thus  far,  I have  been  speaking  only  of  the  laws  of 
structure  relating  to  ‘the  projection  of  the  mass  which  becomes 
itself  the  sculpture.  Another  most  interesting  group  of  con- 
structive laws  governs  its  relation  to  the  line  that  contains  or 
defines  it. 

In  your  Standard  Series  I have  placed  a photograph  of  the 
south  transept  of  Kouen  Cathedral.  Strictly  speaking,  all 
standards  of  Gothic  are  of  the  thirteenth  century  ; but,  in  the 
fourteenth,  certain  qualities  of  richness  are  obtained  by  the 
diminution  of  restraint ; out  of  which  we  must  choose  what  is 
best  in  their  kinds.  The  pedestals  of  the  statues  which  once 
occupied  the  lateral  recesses  are,  as  you  see,  covered  with 
groups  of  figures,  enclosed  each  in  a quatrefoil  panel ; the 


110 


ABATE  A PEN  l1  ELI CL 


spaces  between  this  panel  and  the  enclosing  square  being 
filled  tvith  sculptures  of  animals. 

You  cannot  anywhere  find  a more  lovely  piece  of  fancy,  or 
more  illustrative  of  the  quantity  of  result  that  may  be  obtained 
with  low  and  simple  chiselling.  The  figures  are  all  perfectly 
simple  in  drapery,  the  story  told  by  lines  of  action  only  in  the 
main  group,  no  accessories  being  admitted.  There  is  no  un- 
dercutting anywhere,  nor  exhibition  of  technical  skill,  but 
the  fondest  and  tenderest  appliance  of  it ; and  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal charms  of  the  whole  is  the  adaptation  of  every  subject 
to  its  quaint  limit.  The  tale  must  be  told  within  the  four 
petals  of  the  quatrefoil,  and  the  wildest  and  playfullest  beasts 
must  never  come  out  of  their  narrow  corners.  T fie  attention 
with  which  spaces  of  this  kind  are  filled  by  the  Gothic  design- 
ers is  not  merely  a beautiful  compliance  with  architectural  re- 
quirements, but  a definite  assertion  of  their  delight  in  the 
restraint  of  law  ; for,  in  illuminating  books,  although,  if  they 
chose  it,  they  might  have  designed  floral  ornaments,  as  we 
now  usually  do,  rambling  loosely  over  the  leaves,  and  although, 
in  later  works,  such  license  is  often  taken  by  them,  in  all  books 
of  the  fine  time  the  wandering  tendrils  are  enclosed  by  limits 
approximately  rectilinear,  and  in  gracefullest  branching  often 
detach  themselves  from  the  right  line  only  by  curvature  of  ex- 
treme severity. 

174.  Since  the  darkness  and  extent  of  shadow  by  which 
the  sculpture  is  relieved  necessarily  vary  with  the  depth  of  the 
x*ecess,  there  arise  a series  of  problems,  in  deciding  which  the 
wholesome  desire  for  emphasis  by  means  of  shadow  is  too  often 
exaggerated  by  the  ambition  of  the  sculptor  to  show  his  skill 
in  undercutting.  The  extreme  of  vulgarity  is  usually  reached 
when  the  entire  bas-relief  is  cut  hollow  underneath,  as  in 
much  Indian  and  Chinese  work,  so  as  to  relieve  its  forms 
against  an  absolute  darkness  ; but  no  formal  law  can  ever  be 
given  ; for  exactly  the  same  thing  may  be  beautifully  done  for 
a wise  purpose,  by  one  person,  which  is  basely  done,  and  to 
no  purpose,  or  to  a bad  one,  by  another.  Thus,  the  desire  for 
emphasis  itself  may  be  the  craving  of  a deadened  imagination, 
or  the  passion  of  a vigorous  one  ; and  relief  against  shadow 


' 


STRUCTURE . 1H 

may  be  sought  by  one  man  only  for  sensation,  and  by  another 
for  intelligibility.  John  of  Pisa  undercuts  fiercely,  in  order 
to  bring  out  the  vigour  of  life  which  no  level  contour  could 
render  ; the  Lombardi  of  Venice  undercut  delicately,  in  order 
to  obtain  beautiful  lines,  and  edges  of  faultless  precision  ; but 
the  base  Indian  craftsmen  undercut  only  that  people  may 
wonder  how  the  chiselling  was  done  through  the  holes,  or  that 
they  may  see  every  monster  white  against  black. 

175.  Yet,  here  again  we  are  met  by  another  necessity  for 
discrimination.  There  may  be  a true  delight  in  the  inlaying 
of  white  on  dark,  as  there  is  a true  delight  in  vigorous  round- 
ing. Nevertheless,  the  general  law  is  always,  that,  the  lighter 
the  incisions,  and  the  broader  the  surface,  the  grander,  cseteris 
paribus,  will  be  the  work.  Of  the  structural  terms  of  that 
work  you  now  know  enough  to  understand  that  the  schools  of 
good  sculpture,  considered  in  relation  to  projection,  divide 
themselves  into  four  entirely  distinct  groups  : — 

1st.  Flat  Relief,  in  which  the  surface  is,  in  many  places, 
absolutely  fiat  ; and  the  expression  depends  greatly 
on  the  lines  of  its  outer  contour,  and  on  fine  incis- 
ions within  them. 

2nd.  Round  Relief,  in  which,  as  in  the  best  coins,  the  sculpt- 
ured mass  projects  so  as  to  be  capable  of  complete 
modulation  into  form,  but  is  not  anywhere  undercut. 
The  formation  of  a coin  by  the  blow  of  a die  neces- 
sitates, of  course,  the  severest  obedience  to  this  law. 

3rd.  Edged  Relief.  Undercutting  admitted,  so  as  to  throw 
out  the  forms  against  a background  of  shadow. 

4th.  Full  Relief.  The  statue  completely  solid  in  form,  and 
unreduced  in  retreating  depth  of  it,  yet  connected 
locally  with  some  definite  part  of  the  building,  so  as 
to  be  still  dependent  on  the  shadow  of  its  back- 
ground and  direction  of  protective  line. 

176.  Let  me  recommend  you  at  once  to  take  what  pains 
may  be  needful  to  enable  you  to  distinguish  these  four  kinds 
of  sculpture,  for  the  distinctions  between  them  are  not  founded 
on  mere  differences  in  gradation  of  depth.  They  are  truly 
four  species,  or  orders,  of  sculpture,  separated  from  each  other 


112 


ABATE  A PENT  ELI  CL 


by  determined  characters.  I have  used,  you  may  have  noted, 
hitherto  in  my  Lectures,  the  word  “ bas-relief  ” almost  indis- 
criminately for  all,  because  the  degree  of  lowness  or  highness 
of  relief  is  not  the  question,  but  the  method  of  relief.  Observe 
again,  therefore — 

A.  If  a portion  of  the  surface  is  absolutely  hat,  you  have  the 
first  order — Flat  Belief. 

B.  If  every  portion  of  the  surface  is  rounded,  but  none  un- 
dercut, you  have  Bound  Belief — essentially  that  of  seals  and 
coins. 

C.  If  any  part  of  the  edges  be  undercut,  but  the  general 
projection  of  solid  form  reduced,  you  have  what  I think  you 
may  conveniently  call  Foliate  Belief, — the  parts  of  the  design 
overlapping  each  other  in  places,  like  edges  of  leaves. 

D.  If  the  undercutting  is  bold  and  deep,  and  the  projection 
of  solid  form  unreduced,  you  have  full  relief. 

Learn  these  four  names  at  once  by  heart : — • 

Flat  Belief. 

Bound  Belief. 

Foliate  Belief. 

Full  Belief. 

And  whenever  you  look  at  any  piece  of  sculpture,  determine 
first  to  which  of  these  classes  it  belongs  ; and  then  consider 
how  the  sculptor  has  treated  it  with  reference  to  the  neces- 
sary structure — that  reference,  remember,  being  partly  to  the 
mechanical  conditions  of  the  material,  partly  to  the  means  of 
light  and  shade  at  his  command. 

177.  To  take  a single  instance.  You  know,  for  these  many 
years,  I have  been  telling  our  architects  with  all  the  force  of 
voice  I had  in  me,  that  they  could  design  nothing  until  they 
could  carve  natural  forms  rightly.  Many  imagine  that  work 
was  easy  ; but  judge  for  yourselves  whether  it  be  or  not.  In 
Plate  XII.,  I have  drawn,* with  approximate  accuracy,  a cluster 
of  Pliillyrea  leaves  as  they  grow.  Now,  if  we  wanted  to  cut 
them  in  bas-relief,  the  first  thing  we  should  have  to  consider 
would  be  the  position  of  their  outline  on  the  marble  ; — here 
it  is,  as  far  down  as  the  spring  of  the  leaves.  But  do  you 
suppose  that  is  what  an  ordinary  sculptor  could  either  lay  for 


STRUCTURE. 


113 


his  first  sketch,  or  contemplate  as  a limit  to  he  worked  down 
to  ? Then  consider  how  the  interlacing  and  springing  of  the 
leaves  can  he  expressed  within  this  outline.  It  must  be  done 
by  leaving  such  projection  in  the  marble  as  will  take  the  light 
in  the  same  proportion  as  the  drawing  does  ; — and  a Floren- 
tine workman  could  do  it,  for  close  sight,  without  driving  one 
incision  deeper,  or  raising  a single  surface  higher,  than  the 
eighth  of  an  inch.  Indeed,  no  sculptor  of  the  finest  time 


Fig.  9. 


router  design  such  a complex  cluster  of  leaves  as  this,  except 
for  bronze  or  iron  work  ; they  would  take  simpler  contours 
for  marble  ; but  the  laws  of  treatment  would,  under  these 
conditions,  remain  just  as  strict  : and  you  may,  perhaps,  be- 
lieve me  now  when  I tell  you  that,  in  any  piece  of  fine  struct- 
ural sculpture  by  the  great  masters,  there  is  more  subtlety 
and  noble  obedience  to  lovely  laws  than  could  be  explained  to 
you  if  I took  twenty  lectures  to  do  it  in,  instead  of  one. 

178.  There  remains  yet  a point  of  mechanical  treatment,  on 
which  I have  not  yet  touched  at  all ; nor  that  the  least  impor- 
8 


114 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


tant, — namely,  the  actual  method  and  style  of  handling.  A 
great  sculptor  uses  his  tools  exactly  as  a painter  his  pencil, 
and  you  may  recognize  the  decision  of  his  thought,  and  glow 
of  his  temper,  no  less  in  the  workmanship  than  the  design. 
The  modern  system  of  modelling  the  work  in  clay,  getting  it 
into  form  by  machinery,  and  by  the  hands  of  subordinates, 
and  touching  it  at  last,  if  indeed  the  (so  called)  sculptor  touch 
it  at  all,  only  to  correct  their  inefficiencies,  renders  the  pro- 
duction of  good  work  in  marble  a physical  impossibility.  The 
first  result  of  it  is  that  the  sculptor  thinks  in  clay  instead  of 
marble,  and  loses  his  instinctive  sense  of  the  proper  treatment 
of  a brittle  substance.  The  second  is  that  neither  he  nor  the 
public  recognize  the  touch  of  the  chisel  as  expressive  of  per- 
sonal feeling  or  power,  and  that  nothing  is  looked  for  except 
mechanical  polish. 

179.  The  perfectly  simple  piece  of  Greek  relief  represented 
in  Plate  XIII.,  will  enable  you  to  understand  at  once, — exam- 
ination of  the  original,  at  your  leisure,  will  prevent  you,  I 
trust,  from  ever  forgetting — what  is  meant  by  the  virtue  of 
handling  in  sculpture. 

The  projection  of  the  heads  of  the  four  horses,  one  behind 
the  other,  is  certainly  not  more,  altogether,  than  three-quarters 
of  an  inch  from  the  flat  ground,  and  the  one  in  front  does  not 
in  reality  project  more  than  the  one  behind  it,  yet,  by  mere 
drawing,*  you  see  the  sculptor  has  got  them  to  appear  to  re- 
cede in  due  order,  and  by  the  soft  rounding  of  the  flesh  sur- 
faces, and  modulation  of  the  veins,  he  has  taken  away  all  look 
of  flatness  from  the  necks.  He  has  drawn  the  eyes  and  nos- 
trils with  dark  incision,  careful  as  the  finest  touches  of  a 
painter’s  pencil : and  then,  at  last,  when  he  comes  to  the  manes, 
he  has  let  fly  hand  and  chisel  with  their  full  force,  and  where 
a base  workman,  (above  all,  if  he  had  modelled  the  thing  in 
clay  first,)  would  have  lost  himself  in  laborious  imitation  of 
hair,  the  Greek  has  struck  the  tresses  out  with  angular  inci- 

* This  plate  has  been  executed  from  a drawing  by  Mr.  Burgess,  in 
which  he  has  followed  the  curves  of  incision  with  exquisite  care,  and 
preserved  the  effect  of  the  surface  of  the  stone,  where  a photograph 
would  have  lost  it  by  exaggerating  accidental  stains. 


STRUCTURE. 


115 


sions,  deep  driven,  every  one  in  appointed  place  and  deliberate 
curve,  yet  flowing  so  free  under  his  noble  hand  that  you  can- 
not alter,  without  harm,  the  bending  of  any  single  ridge,  nor 
contract,  nor  extend,  a point  of  them.  And  if*  you  will  look 
back  to  Plate  IX.  you  will  see  the  difference  between  this  sharp 
incision,  used  to  express  horse-hair,  and  the  soft  incision  with 
intervening  rounded  ridge,  used  to  express  the  hair  of  Apollo 
Chrysocomes  ; and,  beneath,  the  obliquely  ridged  incision  used 
to  express  the  plumes  of  his  swan  ; in  both  these  cases  the 
handling  being  much  more  slow,  because  the  engraving  is  in 
metal ; but  the  structural  importance  of  incision,  as  the  means 
of  effect,  never  lost  sight  of.  Finally,  here  are  two  actual  ex- 
amples of  the  work  in  marble  of  the  two  great  schools  of  the 
wrorld  ; one,  a little  Fortune,  standing  tiptoe  on  the  globe  of 
the  Earth,  its  surface  traced  with  lines  in  hexagons  ; not  cha- 
otic under  Fortune’s  feet ; Greek,  this,  and  by  a trained  work- 
man ; — dug  up  in  the  temple  of  Neptune  at  Corfu  ; — and  here, 
a Florentine  portrait-marble,  found  in  the  recent  alterations, 
face  downwards,  under  the  pavement  of  Sta  Maria  Novella  ; * 
both  of  them  first-rate  of  their  kind  ; and  both  of  them,  while 
exquisitely  finished  at  the  telling  points,  showing,  on  all  their 
unregarded  surfaces,  the  rough  furrow  of  the  fast-driven 
chisel,  as  distinctly  as  the  edge  of  a common  paving-stone. 

180.  Let  me  suggest  to  you,  in  conclusion,  one  most  inter- 
esting point  of  mental  expression  in  these  necessary  aspects 
of  finely  executed  sculpture.  I have  already  again  and  again 
pressed  on  your  attention  the  beginning  of  the  arts  of  men  in 
the  make  and  use  of  the  ploughshare.  Bead  more  carefully 
— you  might  indeed  do  well  to  learn  at  once  by  heart, — the 
twenty-seven  lines  of  the  Fourth  Pythian,  which  describe  the 
ploughing  of  Jason.  There  is  nothing  grander  extant  in 
human  fancy,  nor  set  down  in  human  words : but  this  great 
mythical  expression  of  the  conquest  of  the  earth-clay,  and 
brute-force,  by  vital  human  energy,  will  become  yet  more 
interesting  to  you  wrhen  you  reflect  what  enchantment  has 
been  cut,  on  whiter  clay,  by  the  tracing  of  finer  furrows  ; — 

* These  two  marbles  will  always,  henceforward,  be  sufficiently  ac- 
cessible for  reference  bi  my  room  at  Corpus  Christi  College. 


116 


ARATRA  PENTELICL 


what  the  delicate  and  consummate  arts  of  man  have  done  by 
the  ploughing  of  marble,  and  granite,  and  iron.  You  will 
learn  daily  more  and  more,  as  you  advance  in  actual  practice, 
how  the  primary  manual  art  of  engraving,  in  the  steadiness, 
clearness,  and  irrevocableness  of  it,  is  the  best  art- discipline 
that  can  be  given  either  to  mind  or  hand  ; * you  will  recog- 
nize one  law  of  right,  pronouncing  itself  in  the  well-resolved 
work  of  every  age  ; you  wTill  see  the  firmly  traced  and  irrev- 
ocable incision  determining  not  only  the  forms,  but,  in  great 
part,  the  moral  temper,  of  all  Vitally  progressive  art ; you  will 
trace  the  same  principle  and  power  in  the  furrows  which  the 
oblique  sun  shows  on  the  granite  of  his  own  Egyptian  city, — 
in  the  white  scratch  of  the  stylus  through  the  colour  on  a 
Greek  vase — in  the  first  delineation,  on  the  wet  wall,  of  the 
groups  of  an  Italian  fresco  ; in  the  unerring  and  unalterable 
touch  of  the  great  engraver  of  Nuremberg, — and  in  the  deep 
driven  and  deep  bitten  ravines  of  metal  by  which  Turner 
closed,  in  embossed  limits,  the  shadows  of  the  Liber  Studi- 
orum. 

Learn,  therefore,  in  its  full  extent,  the  force  of  the  great 
Greek  word,  xapa v™ ; — and,  give  me  pardon — if  you  think 
pardon  needed,  that  I ask  you  also  to  learn  the  full  meaning 
of  the  English  word  derived  from  it.  Here,  at  the  Ford  of 
the  Oxen  of  Jason,  are  other  furrows  to  be  driven  than  these 
in  the  marble  of  Pentelicus.  The  fruitfullest,  or  the  fatallest 
of  all  ploughing  is  that  by  the  thoughts  of  your  youth,  on  the 
white  field  of  its  imagination.  For  by  these,  either  down  to 
the  disturbed  spirit,  “ k£k.ottt(u  kclI  xaP(^cr(TeTaL  ireSoi/;”  or 
around  the  quiet  spirit,  and  on  all  the  laws  of  conduct  that 
hold  it,  as  a fair  vase  its  frankincense,  are,  ordained  the  pure 
colours,  and  engraved  the  just  Characters,  of  JEonian  life. 


* Tli at  it  was  also,  in  some  cases,  the  earliest  that  the  Greeks  gave, 
is  proved  by  Lucian’s  account  of  his  first  lesson  at  his  uncle’s ; the 
cyKoirevs,  literally  “in-cutter” — being  the  first  tool  put  into  his  hand, 
and  an  earthenware  tablet  to  cut  upon,  which  the  boy  pressing  too  hard, 
presently  breaks; — gets  beaten— goes  home  crying,  and  becomes,  after 
his  dream  above  quoted,  a philosopher  instead  of  a sculptor. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


117 


LECTUKE  VI. 

THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 

December , 1870. 

181.  It  can  scarcely  be  needful  for  me  to  tell  even  the  younger 
members  of  my  present  audience,  that  the  conditions  neces- 
sary for  the  production  of  a perfect  school  of  sculpture  have 
only  twice  been  met  in  the  history  of  the  world,  and  then  for 
a short  time  ; nor  for  short  time  only,  but  also  in  narrow  dis- 
tricts, namely,  in  the  valleys  and  islands  of  Ionian  Greece,  and 
in  the  strip  of  land  deposited  by  the  Arno,  between  the  Apen- 
nine  crests  and  the  sea. 

All  other  schools,  except  these  two,  led  severally  by  Athens 
in  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  and  by  Florence  in  the 
fifteenth  of  our  own  era,  are  imperfect  ; and  the  best  of  them 
are  derivative  : these  two  are  consummate  in  themselves,  and 
the  origin  of  what  is  best  in  others. 

182.  And  observe,  these  Athenian  and  Florentine  schools 
are  both  of  equal  rank,  as  essentially  original  and  independ- 
ent. The  Florentine,  being  subsequent  to  the  Greek,  bor- 
rowed much  frctm  it  ; but  it  would  have  existed  just  as  strongly 
— and,  perhaps,  in  some  respects,  more  nobly — had  it  been 
the  first,  instead  of  the  latter  of  the  two.  The  task  set  to  each 
of  these  mightiest  of  the  nations  was,  indeed,  practically  the 
same,  and  as  hard  to  the  one  as  to  the  other.  The  Greeks 
found  Phoenician  and  Etruscan  art  monstrous,  and  had  to 
make  them  human.  The  Italians  found  Byzantine  and  Nor- 
man art  monstrous,  and  had  to  make  them  human.  The 
original  power  in  the  one  case  is  easily  traced  ; in  the  other 
it  has  partly  to  be  unmasked,  because  the  change  at  Florence 
was,  in  many  points,  suggested  and  stimulated  by  the  former 
school.  But  we  mistake  in  supposing  that  Athens  taught 
Florence  the  laws  of  design  ; she  taught  her,  in  reality,  only 
the  duty  of  truth. 

183.  You  remember  that  I told  you  the  highest  art  could 


118  ABATE  A PENT  ELI  CL 

do  no  more  than  rightly  represent  the  human  form.  This  is 
the  simple  test,  then,  of  a perfect  school, — -that  it  has  repre- 
sented the  human  form,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  of 
its  being  better  done.  And  that,  I repeat,  has  been  accom- 
plished twice  only  : once  in  Athens,  once  in  Florence.  And 
so  narrow  is  the  excellence  even  of  these  two  exclusive  schools, 
that  it  cannot  be  said  of  either  of  them  that  they  represented 
the  entire  human  form.  The  Greeks  perfectly  drew,  and  per- 
fectly moulded  the  body  and  limbs  ; but  there  is,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  no  instance  of  their  representing  the  face  as  well 
as  any  great  Italian.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Italian  painted 
and  carved  the  face  insuperably  ; but  I believe  there  is  no  in- 
stance of  his  having  perfectly  represented  the  body,  which, 
by  command  of  his  religion,  it  became  his  pride  to  despise, 
and  his  safety  to  mortify. 

184.  The  general  course  of  your  study  here  renders  it  de- 
sirable that  you  should  be  accurately  acquainted  with  the  lead- 
ing principles  of  Greek  sculpture  ; but  I cannot  lay  these  be- 
fore you  without  giving  undue  prominence  to  some  of  the 
special  merits  of  that  school,  unless  I previously  indicate  the 
relation  it  holds  to  the  more  advanced,  though  less  disciplined, 
excellence  of  Christian  art. 

In  this  and  the  last  lecture  of  the  present  course,*  I shall 
endeavour,  therefore,  to  mass  for  you,  in  such  rude  and  dia- 
gram-like outline  as  may  be  possible  or  intelligible,  the  main 
characteristics  of  the  two  schools,  completing  and  correcting 
the  details  of  comparison  afterwards  ; and  not  answering,  ob- 
serve, at  present,  for  any  generalization  I give  you,  except  as  a 
ground  for  subsequent  closer  and  more  qualified  statements. 

And  in  carrying  out  this  parallel,  I shall  speak  indifferently 
of  works  of  sculpture,  and  of  the  modes  of ' painting  which 

* Tlie  closing  Lecture,  on  the  religious  temper  of  the  Florentine, 
though  necessary  for  the  complete  explanation  of  the  subject  to  my 
class,  at  the  time,  introduced  new  points  of  inquiry  which  I do  not 
choose  to  lay  before  the  general  reader  until  they  can  be  examined  in 
fuller  sequence.  The  present  volume,  therefore,  closes  with  the  Sixth 
Lecture,  and  that  on  Christian  art  will  be  given  as  the  first  of  the  pub- 
lished course  on  Florentine  Sculpture. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


119 

propose  to  themselves  the  same  objects  as  sculpture.  And 
this  indeed  Florentine,  as  opposed  to  Venetian,  painting,  and 
that  of  Athens  in  the  fifth  century,  nearly  always  did. 

185.  I begin,  therefore,  by  comparing  two  designs  of  the 
simplest  kind — engravings,  or,  at  least,  linear  drawings,  both  ; 
one  on  clay,  one  on  copper,  made  in  the  central  periods  of 
each  style,  and  representing  the  same  goddess — Aphrodite,, 
They  are  now  set  beside  each  other  in  your  Rudimentary 
Series.  The  first  is  from  a patera  lately  found  at  Camirus, 
authoritatively  assigned  by  Mr.  Newton,  in  his  recent  catalogue, 
to  the  best  period  of  Greek  art.  The  second  is  from  one  of 
the  series  of  engravings  executed,  probably,  by  Baccio  Baldini, 
in  1485,  out  of  which  I chose  your  first  practical  exercise — the 
Sceptre  of  Apollo.  I cannot,  however,  make  the  comparison 
accurate  iu  all  respects,  for  I am  obliged  to  set  the  restricted 
type  of  the  Aphrodite  Urania  of  the  Greeks  beside  the  univer- 
sal Deity  conceived  by  the  Italian  as  governing  the  air,  earth, 
and  sea  ; nevertheless  the  restriction  in  the  mind  of  the  Greek, 
and  expatiation  in  that  of  the  Florentine,  are  both  character- 
istic. The  Greek  Venus  Urania  is*flying  in  heaven,  her  power 
over  the  waters  symbolized  by  her  being  borne  by  a swan,  and 
her  power  over  the  earth  by  a single  flower  in  her  right  hand  ; 
but  the  Italian  Aphrodite  is  rising  out  of  the  actual  sea,  and 
only  half  risen  : her  limbs  are  still  in  the  sea,  her  merely  ani- 
mal strength  filling  the  waters  with  their  life  ; but  her  body 
to  the  loins  is  in  the  sunshine,  her  face  raised  to  the  sky  ; her 
hand  is  about  to  lay  a garland  of  flowers  on  the  earth. 

186.  The  Venus  Urania  of  the  Greeks,  in  her  relation  to 
men,  has  power  only  over  lawful  and  domestic  love  ; there- 
fore, she  is  fully  dressed,  and  not  only  quite  dressed,  but  most 
daintily  and  trimly  : her  feet  delicately  sandalled,  her  gown 
spotted  with  little  stars,  her  hair  brushed  exquisitely  smooth 
at  the  top  of  her  head,  trickling  in  minute  waves  down  her 
forehead  ; and  though,  because  there’s  such  a quantity  of  it, 
she  can’t  possibly  help  having  a chignon,  look  how  tightly  she 
lias  fastened  it  in  with  her  broad  fillet.  Of  course  she  is 
married,  so  she  must  wear  a cap  with  pretty  minute  pendant 
jewels  at  the  border  ; and  a very  small  necklace,  all  that  her 


120 


ABATE  A PE  NT  ELI  CL 


husband  can  properly  afford,  just  enough  to  go  closely  round 
the  neck,  and  no  more.  On  the  contrary,  the  Aphrodite  of 
the  Italian,  being  universal  love,  is  pure-naked  ; and  her  long- 
hair is  thrown  wild  to  the  wind  and  sea. 

These  primal  differences  in  the  symbolism,  observe,  are 
only  because  the  artists  are  thinking  of  separate  powers  : 
they  do  not  necessarily  involve  any  national  distinction  in 
feeling.  But  the  differences  I have  next  to  indicate  are  es- 
sential, and  characterize  the  two  opposed  national  modes  of 
mind. 

187.  First,  and  chiefly.  The  Greek  Aphrodite  is  a very 
pretty  person,  and  the  Italian  a decidedly  plain  one.  That  is 
because  a Greek  thought  no  one  could  possibly  love  any  but 
pretty  people  ; but  an  Italian  thought  that  love  could  give 
dignity  to  the  meanest  form  that  it  inhabited,  and  light  to  the 
poorest  that  it  looked  upon.  So  his  Aphrodite  will  not  con- 
descend to  be  pretty. 

188.  Secondly.  In  the  Greek  Venus  the  breasts  are  broad 
and  full,  though  perfectly  severe  in  their  almost  conical  pro- 
file ; — (you  are  allowed  on  'purpose  to  see  the  outline  of  the 
right  breast,  under  the  chiton  ;) — also  the  right  arm  is  left  bare, 
and  you  can  just  see  the  contour  of  the  front  of  the  right 
limb  and  knee  ; both  arm  and  limb  pure  and  firm,  but  lovely. 
The  plant  she  holds  in  her  hand  is  a branching  and  flowering- 
one,  the  seed  vessel  prominent.  These  signs  all  mean  that 
her  essential  function  is  child-bearing. 

On  the  contrary,  in  the  Italian  Venus  the  breasts  are  so 
small  as  to  be  scarcely  traceable  ; the  body  strong,  and  almost 
masculine  in  its  angles  ; the  arms  meagre  and  unattractive, 
and  she  lays  a decorative  garland  of  flowers  on  the  earth. 
These  signs  mean  that  the  Italian  thought  of  love  as  the 
strength  of  an  eternal  spirit,  for  ever  helpful ; and  for  ever 
crowned  with  flowers,  that  neither  know  seed-time  nor  har- 
vest, and  bloom  where  there  is  neither  death,  nor  birth. 

189.  Thirdly.  The  Greek  Aphrodite  is  entirely  calm,  and 
looks  straight  forward.  Not  one  feature  of  her  face  is  dis- 
turbed, or  seems  ever  to  have  been  subject  to  emotion.  The 
Italian  Aphrodite  looks  up,  her  face  a]l  quivering  and  burning 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


121 


with  passion  and  wasting  anxiety.  The  Greek  one  is  quiet, 
self-possessed,  and  self-satisfied  ; the  Italian  incapable  of  rest ; 
she  has  had  no  thought  nor  care  for  herself ; her  hair  has 
been  bound  by  a fillet  like  the  Greeks  ; but  it  is  now  all  fallen 
loose,  and  clotted  with  the  sea,  or  clinging  to  her  body  ; only 
the  front  tress  of  it  is  caught  by  the  breeze  from  her  raised 
forehead,  and  lifted,  in  the  place  where  the  tongues  of  fire 
rest  on  the  brows,  in  the  early  Christian  pictures  of  Pentecost, 
and  the  waving  fires  abide  upon  the  heads  of  Angelico’s  ser- 
aphim. 

190.  There  are  almost  endless  points  of  interest,  great  and 
small,  to  be  noted  in  these  differences  of  treatment.  This 
binding  of  the  hair  by  the  single  fillet  marks  the  straight 
course  of  one  great  system  of  art  method,  from  that  Greek 
head  which  I showed  you  on  the  archaic  coin  of  the  seventh 
century  before  Christ,  to  this  of  the  fifteenth  of  our  own  era 
— nay,  when  you  look  close,  you  will  see  the  entire  action  of 
the  head  depends  on  one  lock  of  hair  falling  back  from  the 
ear,  which  it  does  in  compliance  with  the  old  Greek  observance 
of  its  being  bent  there  by  the  pressure  of  the  helmet..  That 
rippling  of  it  down  her  shoulders  comes  from  the  Athena  of 
of  Corinth  ; the  raising  of  it  on  her  forehead,  from  the  knot 
of  the  hair  of  Diana,  changed  into  the  vestal  fire  of  the  angels. 
But  chiefly,  the  calmness  of  the  features  in  the  one  face,  and 
their  anxiety  in  the  other,  indicate  first,  indeed,  the  character- 
istic difference  in  every  conception  of  the  schools,  the  Greek 
never  representing  expression,  the  Italian  primarily  seeking 
it  ; but  far  more,  mark  for  us  here  the  utter  change  in  the 
conception  of  love  ; from  the  tranquil  guide  and  queen  of  a 
happy  terrestrial  domestic  life,  accepting  its  immediate 
pleasures  and  natural  duties,  to  the  agonizing  hope  of  an  in- 
finite good,  and  the  ever  mingled  joy  and  terror  of  a love  di- 
vine in  jealousy,  crying,  “ Set  me  a|  a seal  upon  thine  heart, 
as  a seal  upon  thine  arm  ; for  love  is  strong  as  death,  jealousy 
is  cruel  as  the  grave.” 

The  vast  issues  dependent  on  this  change  in  the  conception 
of  the  ruling  passion  of  the  human  soul,  I will  endeavour  to 
show  you,  on  a future  occasion  : in  my  present  lecture,  I 


122 


ARATRA  RENTE LICI 


shall  limit  myself  to  the  definition  of  the  temper  of  Greek 
sculpture,  and  of  its  distinctions  from  Florentine  in  the  treat- 
ment of  any  subject  whatever,  be  it  love  or  hatred,  hope  or 
despair. 

These  great  differences  are  mainly  the  following. 

191.  1.  A Greek  never  expresses  momentary  passion  ; a 
Florentine  looks  to  momentary  passion  as  the  ultimate  object 
of  his  skill. 

When  you  are  next  in  London,  look  carefully  in  the  British 
Museum  at  the  casts  from  the  statues  in  the  pediment  of  the 
Temple  of  Minerva  at  JEgina.  You  have  there  Greek  work  of 
definite  date  ; — about  600  b.c.,  certainly  before  580 — of  the 
purest  kind  ; and  you  have  the  representation  of  a noble  ideal 
subject,  the  combats  of  the  iEacidse  at  Troy,  with  Athena  her- 
self looking  on.  But  there  is  no  attempt  whatever  to  repre- 
sent expression  in  the  features,  none  to  give  complexity  of 
action  or  gesture  ; there  is  no  struggling,  no  anxiety,  no  visi- 
ble temporary  exertion  of  muscles.  There  are  fallen  figures, 
one  pulling  a lance  out  of  his  wound,  and  others  in  attitudes 
of  attack  and  defence  ; several  kneeling  to  draw  their  bows. 
But  all  inflict  and  suffer,  conquer  or  expire,  with  the  same 
smile. 

192.  Plate  XIV.  gives  you  examples,  from  more  advanced 
art,  of  true  Greek  representation  ; the  subjects  being  the  two 
contests  of  leading  import  to  the  Greek  heart — that  of  Apollo 
with  the  Python,  and  of  Hercules  with  the  NemeanLion.  You 
see  that  in  neither  case  is  there  the  slightest  effort  to  repre- 
sent the  kvoraa,  or  agony  of  contest.  No  good  Greek  artist 
would  have  you  behold  the  suffering,  either  of  gods,  heroes, 
or  men  ; nor  allow  you  to  be  apprehensive  of  the  issue  of  their 
contest  with  evil  beasts,  or  evil  spirits.  All  such  lower 
sources  of  excitement  are  to  be  closed  to  you  ; your  interest 
is  to  be  in  the  thoughts  involved  by  the  fact  of  the  war ; and 
in  the  beauty  or  rightness  of  form,  whether  active  or  in- 
active. I have  to  work  out  this  subject  with  you  afterwards, 
and  to  compare  with  the  pure  Greek  method,  of  thought,  that 
of  modern  dramatic  passion,  engrafted  on  it,  as  typically  in 
Turner’s  contest  of  Apollo  and  the  Python  : in  the  meantime, 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


123 


be  content  with,  the  statement  of  this  first  great  principle — 
that  a Greek,  as  such,  never  expresses  momentary  passion. 

193.  Secondly.  The  Greek,  as  such,  never  expresses  per- 
sonal character,  while  a Florentine  holds  it  to  be  the  ultimate 
condition  of  beauty.  You  are  startled,  I suppose,  at  my 
saying  this,  having  had  it  often  pointed  out  to  you,  as  a tran- 
scendent piece  of  subtlety  in  Greek  art,  that  you  could  dis- 
tinguish Hercules  from  Apollo  by  his  being  stout,  and  Diana 
from  Juno  by  her  being  slender.  That  is  very  true  ; but  those 
are  general  distinctions  of  class,  not  special  distinctions  of 
personal  character.  Even  as  general,  they  are  bodily,  not 
mental.  They  are  the  distinctions,  in  fleshly  aspect,  between 
an  athlete  and  a musician, — between  a matron  and  a huntress  ; 
but  in  no  wise  distinguish  the  simple-hearted  hero  from  the 
subtle  Master  of  the  Muses,  nor  the  wilful  and  fitful  girl- 
goddess  from  the  cruel  and  resolute  matron-goddess.  But 
judge  for  yourselves  ; — In  the  successive  plates,  XY. — XVIII.,  I 
show  you,*  typically  represented  as  the  protectresses  of  nations, 
the  Argive,  Cretan,  and  Lacinian  Hera,  the  Messenian  Demeter, 
the  Athena  of  Corinth,  the  Artemis  of  Syracuse,  the  fountain 
Arethusa  of  Syracuse,  and  the  Sirem  Ligeia  of  Terina.  Now, 
of  these  heads,  it  is  true  that  some  are  more  delicate  in  feature 
than  the  rest,  and  some  softer  in  expression  : in  other  respects, 
can  you  trace  any  distinction  between  the  Goddesses  of  Earth 
and  Heaven,  or  between  the  Goddess  of  Wisdom  and  the  Water 
Nymph  of  Syracuse  ? So  little  can  you  do  so,  that  it  would  have 
remained  a disputed  question — had  not  the  name  luckily  been 
inscribed  on  some  Syracusan  coins — whether  the  head  upon 
them  was  meant  for  Arethusa  at  all ; and,  continually,  it  becomes 
a question  respecting  finished  statues,  if  without  attributes,  “Is 
this  Bacchus  or  Apollo — Zeus  or  Poseidon  ? ” There  is  a fact  for 
you  ; noteworthy,  I think  ! There  is  no  personal  character  in 

* These  plates.of  coins  are  given  for  future  reference  and  examina- 
tion, not  merely  for  the  use  made  of  them  in  this  place.  The  Lacinian 
Hera,  if  a coin  could  be  found  unworn  in  surface,  would  be  very  noble  ; 
her  hair  is  thrown  free  because  she  is  the  goddess  of  the  cape  of  storms, 
though  in  her  temple,  there,  the  wind  never  moved  the  ashes  on  its 
altar.  (Livy,  xxiv.  3.) 


24 


ABATE  A PENT  ELIO I. 


:ue  Greek  art : — abstract  ideas  of  youth  and  age,  strength 
nd  swiftness,  virtue  and  vice, — yes  : but  there  is  no  individu- 
Lity  ; and  the  negative  holds  down  to  the  revived  conven- 
onalism  of  the  Greek  school  by  Leonardo,  when  he  tells  you 
ow  you  are  to  paint  young  women,  and  how  old  ones  ; though 
Greek  would  hardly  have  been  so  discourteous  to  age  as  the 
talian  is  in  his  canon  of  it, — “ old  women  should  be  repre- 
mted  as  passionate  and  hasty,  after  the  manner  of  Infernal 
’uries.” 

194.  “ But  at  least,  if  the  Greeks  do  not  give  character,  they 
ive  ideal  beauty  ? ” So  it  is  said,  without  contradiction.  But 
ill  you  look  again  at  the  series  of  coins  of  the  best  time  of 
rreek  art,  which  I have  just  set  before  you  ? Are  any  of  these 
oddesses  or  nymphs  very  beautiful?  Certainly  the  Junos 
re  not.  Certainly  the  Demeters  are  not.  The  Siren,  and 
.rethusa,  have  well-formed  and  regular  features ; but  I am 
uite  sure  that  if  you  look  at  them  without  prejudice,  you  will 
link  neither  reach  even  the  average  standard  of  pretty  Eng- 
sh  girls.  The  Venus  Urania  suggests  at  first,  the  idea  of  a 
3ry  charming  person,  but  you  will  find  there  is  no  real  depth 
or  sweetness  in  the  contours,  looked  at  closely.  And  re- 
lember,  these  are  chosen  examples ; the  best  I can  find  of 
ft  current  in  Greece  at, the  great  time  ; and  if  even  I were  to 
ike  the  celebrated  statues,  of  which  only  two  or  three  are 
dant,  not  one  of  them  excels  the  Venus  of  Melos ; and  she, 
3 1 have  already  asserted,  in  The  Queen  of  the  Air , has  notli- 
ig  notable  in  feature  except  dignity  and  simplicity.  Of  Athena 
do  not  know  one  authentic  type  of  great  beauty  ; but  the 
itense  ugliness  which  the  Greeks  could  tolerate  in  their  sym- 
olism  of  her  will  be  convincingly  proved  to  you  by  the  coin 
^presented  in  Plate  VI.  You  need  only  look  at  two  or  three 
ases  of  the  best  time,  to  assure  yourselves  that  beauty  of 
mature  was,  in  popular  art,  not  only  unattained,  but  unat- 
mapted  ; and  finally, — and  this  you  may  accept  ^s  a conclusive 
roof  of  the  Greek  insensitiveness  to  the  most  subtle  beauty — 
:iere  is  little  evidence  even  in  their  literature,  and  none  in 
leir  art,  of  their  having  ever  perceived  any  beauty  in  infancy, 
r early  childhood. 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


125 


195.  The  Greeks,  then,  do  not  give  passion,  do  not  give 
character,  do  not  give  refined  or  naive  beauty.  But  you  may 
think  that  the  absence  of  these  is  intended  to  give  dignity  to 
the  gods  and  nymphs  ; and  that  their  calm  faces  would  be 
found,  if  you  long  observed  them.,  instinct  with  some  expres- 
sion of  divine  mystery  or  power. 

I will  convince  you  of  the  narrow  range  of  Greek  thought 
in  these  respects,  by  showing  you,  from  the  two  sides  of  one 
and  the  same  coin,  images  of  the  most  mysterious  of  their 
Deities,  and  the  most  powerful, — Demeter  and  Zeus. 

Bemember,  that  just  as  the  west  coasts  of  Ireland  and  Eng- 
land catch  first  on  their  hills  the  rain  of  the  Atlantic,  so  the 
western  Peloponnese  arrests,  in  the  clouds  of  the  first  moun- 
tain ranges  of  Arcadia,  the  moisture  of  the  Mediterranean  ; 
and  over  all  the  plains  of  Elis,  Pylos,  and  Messene,  the  strength 
and  sustenance  of  men  was  naturally  felt  to  be  granted  by 
Zeus  ; as,  on  the  east  coast  of  Greece,  the  greater  clearness  of 
the  air  by  the  power  of  Athena.  If  you  will  recollect  the 
prayer  of  Bhea,  in  the  single  line  of  Callimachus — “ Tala 
t€kc  kcll  cnr  real  S’  d) Sivcs  e\a<fipaL”  (compare  Pausanias  iv.  33, 
at  the  beginning,) — it  will  mark  for  you  the  connection,  in  the 
Greek  mind,  of  the  birth  of  the  mountain  springs  of  Arcadia 
with  the  birth  of  Zeus.  And  the  centres  of  Greek  thought  on 
this  western  coast  are  necessarily  Elis,  and,  (after  the  time  of 
Epaminondas,)  Messene. 

196.  I show  you  the  coin  of  Messene,  because  the  splendid 
height  and  form  of  Mount  Ithome  were  more  expressive  of 
the  physical  power  of  Zeus  than  the  lower  hills  of  Olympia  ; 
and  also  because  it  was  struck  just  at  the  time  of  the  most 
finished  and  delicate  Greek  art — a little  after  the  main 
strength  of  Phidias,  but  before  decadence  had  generally  pro-: 
nounced  itself.  The  coin  is  a silver  didrachm,  bearing  or* 
one  side  a head  of  Demeter  (Plate  XVI,  at  the  top);  on  the 
other  a full  figure  of  Zeus  Aietophoros  (Plate  XIX.,  at  the 
top)  ; the  two  together  signifying  the  sustaining  strength  of 
the  earth  and  heaven,  Look  first  at  the  head  of  Demeter.  It 
is  merely  meant  to  personify  fulness  of  harvest ; there  is  no 
mystery  in  it,  no  sadness,  no  vestige  of  the  expression  which 


126 


A RAT  11  A PENTELICL 


we  should  have  looked  for  in  any  effort  to  realize  the  Greek 
thoughts  of  the  Earth  Mother,  as  we  find  them  spoken  by  the 
poets.  But  take  it  merely  as  personified  abundance  ; — the 
goddess  of  black  furrow  and  tawny  grass — how  commonplace 
it  is,  and  how  poor ! The  hair  is  grand,  and  there  is  one 
stalk  of  wheat  set  in  it,  which  is  enough  to  indicate  the  god- 
dess who  is  meant ; but,  in  that  very  office,  ignoble,  for  it  shows 
that  the  artist  could  only  inform  you  that  this  was  Demeter 
by  such  a symbol.  How  easy  it  would  have  been  for  a great 
designer  to  have  made  the  hair  lovely  with  fruitful  flowers, 
and  the  features  noble  in  mystery  of  gloom,  or  of  tenderness. 
But  here  you  have  nothing  to  interest  you,  except  the  com- 
mon Greek  perfections  of  a straight  nose  and  a full  chin. 

197.  We  pass,  on  the  reverse  of  the  die,  to  the  figure  of 
Zeus  Aietophoros.  Think  of  the  invocation  to  Zeus  in  the 
Suppliants,  (52 5),  “King  of  Kings,  and  Happiest  of  the 
Happy,  Perfectest  of  the  Perfect  in  strength,  abounding  in 
all  things,  Jove — hear  us  and  be  with  us  ; ” and  then,  consider 
what  strange  phase  of  mind  it  was,  which,  under  the  very 
mountain-home  of  the  god,  was  content  with  this  symbol  of 
him  as  a well-fed  athlete,  holding  a diminutive  and  crouching 
eagle  on  his  fist.  The  features  and  the  right  hand  have  been 
injured  in  this  coin,  but  the  action  of  the  arms  shows  that  it 
held  a thunderbolt,  of  which,  I believe,  the  twisted  rays  were 
triple.  In  the,  presumably  earlier,  coin  engraved  by  Mil- 
lingen,  however,*  it  is  singly  pointed  only  ; and  the  added 
inscription  in  the  field,  renders  the  conjecture  of 

Millingen  probable,  that  this  is  a rude  representation  of  the 
statue  of  Zeus  Ithomates,  made  by  Ageladas,  the  master  of 
Phidias ; and  I think  it  has,  indeed,  the  aspect  of  the  endeav- 
our, by  a workman  of  more  advanced  knowledge,  and  more 
vulgar  temper,  to  put  the  softer  anatomy  of  later  schools 
into  the  simple  action  of  an  archaic  figure.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  here  is  one  of  the  most  refined  cities  of  Greece  content 
with  the  figure  of  an  athlete  as  the  representative  of  their 
own  mountain  god  ; marked  as  a divine  power  merely  by  the 
attributes  of  the  eagle  and  thunderbolt. 

* Ancient  Cities  and  Kings,  Plate  IV,  No.  20, 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


127 


198.  Lastly.  The  Greeks  have  not,  it  appears,  in  any 
supreme  way,  given  to  their  statues  character,  beauty,  or 
divine  strength.  Can  they  give  divine  sadness  ? Shall  we 
find  in  their  artwork  any  of  that  pensiveness  and  yearning 
for  the  dead,  which  fills  the  chants  of  their  tragedy  ? I sup- 
pose if  anything  like  nearness  or  firmness  of  faith  in  after- 
life is  to  be  found  in  Greek  legend,  you  might  look  for  it  in 
the  stories  about  the  Island  of  Leuce,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Danube,  inhabited  by  the  ghosts  of  Achilles,  Patroclus,  Ajax 
the  son  of  O ileus,  and  Helen  ; and  in  which  the  pavement  of 
the  Temple  of  Achilles  was  washed  daily  by  the  sea-birds 
with  their  wings,  dipping  them  in  the  sea. 

Now  it  happens  that  we  have  actually  on  a coin  of  the 
Locrians  the  representation  of  the  ghost  of  the  Lesser  Ajax. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  human  imagination  more 
lovely,  than  their  leaving  always  a place  for  his  spirit,  vacant 
in  their  ranks  of  battle.  But  here  is  their  sculptural  repre- 
sentation of  the  phantom  ; (lower  figure,  Plate  XIX. ),  and  I 
think  you  will  at  once  agree  with  me  in  feeling  that  it  would  be 
impossible  to  conceive  anything  more  completely  unspiritual. 
You  might  more  than  doubt  that  it  could  have  been  meant  for 
the  departed  soul,  unless  you  were  aware  of  the  meaning  of 
this  little  circlet  between  the  feet.  On  other  coins  you  find  his 
name  inscribed  there,  but  in  this  you  have  his  habitation, 
the  haunted  Island  of  Leuce  itself,  with  the  waves  flowing 
round  it. 

199.  Again  and  again,  however,  I have  to  remind  you, 
with  respect  to  these  apparently  frank  and  simple  failures, 
that  the  Greek  always  intends  you  to  think  for  yourself,  and 
understand,  more  than  he  can  speak.  Take  this  instance  at 
our  hands,  the  trim  little  circlet  for  the  Island  of  Leuce. 
The  workman  knows  very  well  it  is  not  like  the  island,  and 
that  he  could  not  make  it  so  ; that  at  its  best,  his  sculpture 
can  be  little  more  than  a letter  ; and  yet,  in  putting  this  cir- 
clet, and  its  encompassing  fretwork  of  minute  waves,  he  does 
more  than  if  he  had  merely  given  you  a letter  L,  or  written 
“ Leuce.”  If  you  know  anything  of  beaches  and  sea,  this 
symbol  will  set  your  imagination  at  work  in  recalling  them  ; 


128 


All  A TEA  PENTELICL 


then  you  will  think  of  the  temple  service  of  the  novitiate  sea- 
birds, and  of  the  ghosts  of  Achilles  and  Patroclus  appearing* 
like  the  Dioscuri,  above  the  storm-clouds  of  the  Euxine.  And 
the  artist,  throughout  his  work,  never  for  an  instant  loses 
faith  in  your  sympathy  and  passion  being  ready  to  answer  his  ; 
- — if  you  have  none  to  give,  he  does  not  care  to  take  you  into 
his  counsel  ; on  the  whole,  would  rather  that  you  should  not 
look  at  his  work. 

200.  But  if  you  have  this  sympathy  to  give,  you  may  be 
sure  that  whatever  he  does  for  you  will  be  right,  as  far  as  he 
can  render  it  so.  It  may  not  be  sublime,  nor  beautiful,  nor 
amusing  ; but  it  will  be  full  of  meaning,  and  faithful  in  guid- 
ance. He  will  give  you  clue  to  myriads  of  things  that  he  can- 
not literally  teach  ; and,  so  far  as  he  does  teach,  you  may  trust 
him.  Is  not  this  saying  much  ? 

And  as  he  strove  only  to  teach  what  was  true,  so,  in  his 
sculptured  symbol,  he  strove  only  to  carve  what  was — Eight. 
He  rules  over  the  arts  to  this  day,  and  will  for  ever,  because 
he  sought  not  first  for  beauty,  nor  first  for  passion,  or  for  inven- 
tion, but  for  Bightness  ; striving  to  display,  neither  himself 
nor  his  art,  but  the  thing  that  he  dealt  with,  in  its  simplicity. 
That  is  his  specific  character  as  a Greek.  Of  course,  every 
nation's  character  is  connected  with  that  of  others  surround- 
ing or  preceding  it ; and  in  the  best  Greek  work  you  will  find 
some  things  that  are  still  false,  or  fanciful  ; but  whatever  in  it 
is  false  or  fanciful,  is  not  the  Greek  part  of  it — it  is  the 
Phoenician,  or  Egyptian,  or  Pelasgian  part.  The  essential  Hel- 
lenic stamp  is  veracity  : — Eastern  nations  drew  their  heroes 
with  eight  legs,  but  the  Greeks  drew  them  with  two  ; — Egyp- 
tians drew  their  deities  with  cats’  heads,  but  the  Greeks  drew 
them  with  men’s  ; and  out  of  all  fallacy,  disproportion,  and 
indefiniteness,  they  were,  day  by  day,  resolvedly  withdraw- 
ing and  exalting  themselves  into  restricted  and  demonstrable 
truth. 

201.  And  now,  having  cut  away  the  misconceptions  which 
encumbered  our  thoughts,  I shall  be  able  to  put  the  Greek 
school  into  some  clearness  of  its  position  for  you,  with  respect 
to  the  art  of  the  world.  That  relation  is  strangely  duplicate ; 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS. 


129 


for  on  one  side,  Greek  art  is  the  root  of  all  simplicity  ; and  on 
the  other,  of  all  complexity. 

On  one  side  I say,  it  is  the  root  of  all  simplicity.  If  you 
were  for  some  prolonged  period  to  study  Greek  sculpture  ex- 
clusively in  the  Elgin  Room  of  the  British  Museum,  and  were 
then  suddenly  transported  to  the  Hotel  de  Cluny,  or  any 
other  museum  of  Gothic  and  barbarian  workmanship,  you 
would  imagine  the  Greeks  were  the  masters  of  all  that  was 
grand,  simple,  wise,  and  tenderly  human,  opposed  to  the  pet- 
tiness of  the  toys  of  the  rest  of  mankind. 

202.  On  one  side  of  their  work  they  are  so.  From  all  vain 
and  mean  decoration — all  weak  and  monstrous  error,  the 
Greeks  rescue  the  forms  of  man  and  beast,  and  sculpture 
them  in  the  nakedness  of  their  true  flesh,  and  with  the  fire 
of  their  living  soul.  Distinctively  from  other  races,  as  I have 
now,  perhaps  to  your  weariness,  told  you,  this  is  the  work  of 
the  Greek,  to  give  health  to  what  was  diseased,  and  chastise- 
ment to  what  was  untrue.  So  far  as  this  is  found  in  any  other 
school,  hereafter,  it  belongs  to  them  by  inheritance  from  the 
Greeks,  or  invests  them  with  the  brotherhood  of  the  Greek. 
And  this  is  the  deep  meaning  of  the  myth  of  Daedalus  as  the 
giver  of  motion  to  statues.  The  literal  change  from  the  bind- 
ing together  of  the  feet  to  their  separation,  and  the  other 
modifications  of  action  which  took  place,  either  in  progressive 
skill,  or  often,  as  the  mere  consequence  of  the  transition  from 
wood  to  stone,  (a  figure  carved  out  of  one  wooden  log  must 
have  necessarily  its  feet  near  each  other,  and  hands  at  its 
sides),  these  literal  changes  are  as  nothing,  in  the  Greek  fable, 
compared  to  the  bestowing  of  apparent  life.  The  figures  of 
monstrous  gods  on  Indian  temples  have  their  legs  separate 
enough  ; but  they  are  infinitely  more  dead  than  the  rude  fig- 
ures at  Branchidae  sitting  with  their  hands  on  their  knees. 
And,  briefly,  the  work  of  Daedalus  is  the  giving  of  deceptive 
life,  as  that  of  Prometheus  the  giving  of  real  life  ; and  I can 
put  the  relation  of  Greek  to  all  other  art,  in  this  function,  be- 
fore you  in  easily  compared  and  remembered  examples. 

203.  Here,  on  the  right,  in  Plate  XX.,  is  an  Indian  bull, 
colossal,  and  elaborately  carved,  which  you  may  take  as  a 

9 


130 


ARATRA  PENTELICL 


, sufficient  type  of  the  bad  art  of  all  the  earth.  False  in  form, 
dead  in  heart,  and  loaded  with  wealth,  externally.  We  will 
not  ask  the  date  of  this  ; it  may  rest  in  the  eternal  obscurity 
of  evil  art,  everywhere,  and  for  ever.  Now,  besides  this  colos- 
sal bull,  here  is  a bit  of  Daedalus  work,  enlarged  from  a coin 
not  bigger  than  a shilling  : look  at  the  two  together,  and  you 
ought  to  know,  henceforward,  what  Greek  art  means,  to  the 
end  of  your  days. 

204.  In  this  aspect  of  it  then,  I say,  it  is  the  simplest  and 
naked est  of  lovely  veracities.  But  it  has  another  aspect,  or 
rather  another  pole,  for  the  opposition  is  diametric.  As  the 
simplest,  so  also  it  is  the  most  complex  of  human  art.  I told 
you  in  my  fifth  Lecture,  showing  you  the  spotty  picture  of 
Velasquez,  that  an  essential  Greek  character  is  a liking  for 
things  that  are  dappled.  And  you  cannot  but  have  noticed 
how  often  and  how  prevalently  the  idea  which  gave  its  name 
to  the  Porch  of  Polygnotus,  “ cr  t o d tt  o l k occurs  to  the 

Greeks  as  connected  with  the  finest  art.  Thus,  when  the  lux- 
urious city  is  opposed  to  the  simple  and  healthful  one,  in  the 
second  book  of  Plato’s  Polity,  you  find  that,  next  to  perfumes, 
pretty  ladies,  and  dice,  you  must  have  in  it  “ irouakCa”  which 
observe,  both  in  that  place  and  again  in  the  third  book,  is  the 
separate  art  of  joiners’  work,  or  inlaying  ; but  the  idea  of  ex- 
quisitely divided  variegation  or  division,  both  in  sight  and 
sound — the  “ ravishing  division  to  the  lute,”  as  in  Pindar’s 
“ 7 tolklXol  v/jlvol  ’ ’ — runs  through  the  compass  of  all  Greek  art- 
description  ; and  if,  instead  of  studying  that  art  among  marbles, 
you  were  to  look  at  it  only  on  vases  of  a fine  time,  (look  back, 
for  instance,  to  Plate  IV.  here),  your  impression  of  it  would 
be,  instead  of  breadth  and  simplicity,  one  of  universal  spot- 
tiness and  chequeredness,  “ kv  ayyeW  ''FtpKecnv  7ra/x7rot,/a/\ois ; ” 
and  of  the  artist’s  delighting  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  crossed 
or  starred  or  spotted  things  ; which,  in  right  places,  he  and 
his  public  both  do  unlimitedly.  Indeed  they  hold  it  compli- 
mentary even  to  a trout,  to  call  him  a “ spotty.”  Do  you 
recollect  the  trout  in  the  tributaries  of  the  Ladon,  which 
Pausanias  says  were  spotted,  so  that  they  were  like  thrushes, 
and  which,  the  Arcadians  told  him,  could  speak  ? In  this  last 


Tim  school  of  Arums. 


131 


TToi/aXta,  however,  they  disappointed  him.  “I,  indeed,  saw 
some  of  them  caught,’’  he  says,  “but  I did  not  hear  any  of 
them  speak,  though  I waited  beside  the  river  till  sunset.” 

205.  I must  sum  roughly  now,  for  I have  detained  you  too 
long. 

The  Greeks  have  been  thus  the  origin  not  only  of  all  broad, 
mighty,  and  calm  conception,  but  of  all  that  is  divided,  deli- 
cate, and  tremulous ; <£  variable  as  the  shade,  by  the  light 
quivering* aspen  made.”  To  them,  as  first  leaders  of  orna- 
mental design,  belongs,  of  right,  the  praise  of  glistenings  in 
gold,  piercings  in  ivory,  stainings  in  purple,  burnishings 
in  dark  blue  steel ; of  the  fantasy  of  the  Arabian  roof 
— quartering  of  the  Christian  shield, — rubric  and  arabesque 
of  Christian  scripture ; in  fine,  all  enlargement,  and  all 
diminution  of  adorning  thought,  from  the  temple  to  the 
toy,  and  from  the  mountainous  pillars  of  Agrigen  turn 
to  the  last  fineness  of  fretwork  in  the  Pisan  Chapel  of  the 
Thorn. 

And  in  their  doing  all  this,  they  stand  as  masters  of  human 
order  and  justice,  subduing  the  animal  nature  guided  by  the 
spiritual  one,  as  you  see  the  Sicilian  Charioteer  stands,  hold- 
ing his  horse-reins,  with  the  wild  lion  racing  beneath  him,  and 
the  flying  angel  above,  on  the  beautiful  coin  of  early  Syracuse  ; 
(lowest  in  Plate  XXL). 

And  the  beginnings  of  Christian  cliivalary  were  in  that 
Greek  bridling  of  the  dark  and  the  white  horses. 

208.  Not  that  a Greek  never  made  mistakes.  He  made  as 
many  as  we  do  ourselves,  nearly  ; — he  died  of  his  mistakes  at 
last — as  we  shall  die  of  them  ; but  so  far  he  was  separated 
from  the  herd  of  more  mistaken  and  more  wretched  nations 
— so  far  as  he  was  Greek — it  was  by  his  rightness.  He  lived, 
and  worked,  and  was  satisfied  with  the  fatness  of  his  land,  and 
the  fame  of  his  deeds,  by  his  justice,  and  reason,  and  modesty. 
He  became  Grceculus  esuriens , little,  and  hungry,  and  every 
man’s  errand-boy,  by  his  iniquity,  and  his  competition,  and 
his  love  of  talk.  But  his  Graecism  was  in  having  done,  at  least 
at  one  period  of  his  dominion,  more  than  anybody  else,  what 
was  modest,  useful,  and  eternally  true  ; and  as  a workman,  he 


132 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


verily  did,  or  first  suggested  the  doing  of,  everything  possible 
to  man. 

Take  Daedalus,  his  great  type  of  the  practically  executive 
craftsman,  and  the  inventor  of  expedients  in  craftsmanship, 
(as  distinguished  from  Prometheus,  the  institutor  of  moral 
order  in  art).  Daedalus  invents, — he,  or  his  nephew, — 

The  potter’s  wheel,  and  all  work  in  clay ; 

The  saw,  and  all  work  in  wood ; 

The  masts  and  sails  of  ships,  and  all  modes  of  motion  ; 
(wings  only  proving  too  dangerous !) 

The  entire  art  of  minute  ornament ; 

And  the  deceptive  life  of  statues. 

By  his  personal  toil,  he  involves  the  fatal  labyrinth  for 
Minos  ; builds  an  impregnable  fortress  for  the  Agrigentines ; 
adorns  healing  baths  among  the  wild  parsley  fields  of  Selinus ; 
buttresses  the  precipices  of  Eryx,  under  the  temple  of  Aph- 
rodite ; and  for  her  temple  itself — finishes  in  exquisiteness 
the  golden  honeycomb. 

207.  Take  note  of  that  last  piece  of  his  art : it  is  connected 
with  many  things  which  I must  bring  before  you  when  we 
enter  on  the  study  of  architecture.  That  study  we  shall  begin 
at  the  foot  of  the  Baptistery  of  Florence,  which,  of  all  build- 
ings known  to  me,  unites  the  most  perfect  symmetry  with  the 
quaintest  miKikia.  Then,  from  the  tomb  of  your  own  Edward 
the  Confessor,  to  the  farthest  shrine  of  the  opposite  Arabian 
and  Indian  world,  I must  show  you  how  the  glittering  and 
iridescent  dominion  of  Daedalus  prevails  ; and  his  ingenuity 
in  division,  interposition,  and  labyrinthine  sequence,  more 
widely  still.  Only  this  last  summer  I found  the  dark  red 
masses  of  the  rough  sandstone  of  Furness  Abbey  had  been 
fitted  by  him,  with  no  less  pleasure  than  he  had  in  carving 
them,  into  wedged  hexagons — reminiscences  of  the  honey- 
comb of  Yenus  Erycina.  His  ingenuity  plays  around  the 
framework  of  all  the  noblest  things ; and  yet  the  brightness 
of  it  has  a lurid  shadow.  The  spot  of  the  fawn,  of  the  bird, 
and  the  moth,  may  be  harmless.  But  Daedalus  reigns  no  less 
over  the  spot  of  the  leopard  and  snake.  That  cruel  and  venom- 
ous power  of  his  art  is  marked,  in  the  legends  of  him,  by 


THE  SCHOOL  OF  ATHENS . 


183 

his  invention  of  the  saw  from  the  serpent’s  tooth  ; and  his 
seeking  refuge,  under  blood-guiltiness,  *with  Minos,  who  can 
judge  evil,  and  measure,  or  remit,  the  penalty  of  it,  but  not 
reward  good : Rhadamanthus  only  can  measure  that : but 
Minos  is  essentially  the  recognizer  of  evil  deeds  “ conoscitor 
delle  peccata,”  whom,  therefore,  you  find  in  Dante  under  the 
form  of  the  epirerov.  “ Cignesi  con  la  coda  tante  volte,  quan~ 
tunque  gradi  vuol  che  giu  sia  messa.” 

And  this  peril  of  the  influence  of  Daedalus  is  twofold  ; first 
in  leading  us  to  delight  in  glitterings  and  semblances  of 
things,  more  than  in*their  form,  or  truth  ; — admire  the  harle- 
quin’s jacket  more  than  the  hero’s  strength  ; and  love  the 
gilding  of  the  missal  more  than  its  words  ; — but  farther,  and 
worse,  the  ingenuity  of  Daedalus  may  even  become  bestial,  an 
instinct  for  mechanical  labour  only,  strangely  involved  with  a 
feverish  and  ghastly  cruelty (you  will  find  this  distinct  in 
the  intensely  Daedal  work  of  the  Japanese)  ; rebellious,  finally, 
against  the  laws  of  nature  and  honour,  and  building  labyrinths 
for  monsters, — not  combs  for  bees. 

208.  Gentlemen,  we  of  the  rough  northern  race  may  never, 
perhaps,  be  able  to  learn  from  the  Greek  his  reverence  for 
beauty  : but  we  may  at  least  learn  his  disdain  of  mechanism  : 
— of  all  work  which  he  felt  to  be  monstrous  and  inhuman  in 
its  imprudent  dexterities. 

We  hold  ourselves,  we  English,  to  be  good  workmen.  I do 
not  think  I speak  with  light  reference  to  recent  calamity,  (for 
I myself  lost  a young  relation,  full  of  hope  and  good  purpose, 
in  the  foundered  ship  London ,)  when  I say  that  either  an 
iEginetan  or  Ionian  shipwright  built  ships  that  could  be  fought 
from,  though  they  were  under  water ; and  neither  of  them 
would  have  been  proud  of  having  built  one  that  would  fill  and 
sink  helplessly  if  the  sea  washed  over  her  deck,  or  turn  upside 
down  if  a squall  struck  her  topsail. 

Believe  me,  gentlemen,  good  workmanship  consists  in  con- 
tinence and  common  sense,  more  than  in  frantic  expatiation 
of  mechanical  ingenuity ; and  if  you  would  be  continent  and 
rational,  you  had  better  learn  more  of  Art  than  you  do  now, 
and  less  of  Engineering.  What  is  taking  place  at  this  very 


134 


ABATE  A PENTELICI. 


hour,*  among  the  streets,  once  so  bright,  and  avenues  once  so 
pleasant,  of  the  fairest  city  in  Europe,  may  surely  lead  us  all 
to  feel  that  the  skill  of  Daedalus,  set  to  build  impregnable 
fortresses,  is  not  so  wisely  applied  as  in  framing  the  rpr^rov 
7rovov, — the  golden  honeycomb. 

* The  siege  of  Paris,  at  the  time  of  the  delivery  of  this  Lecture,  was 
in  one  of  its  most  destructive  phases. 


*T']Ej[E  ENJX 


Mamed  at  the  CSon&ition 

of  her  surroundings,  with  friends  and  family  thoroughly  disgueted  by  the 
Accumulation  of  dirt  from  cellar  to  garret,  and  parlor  to  kitchen,  many  & 
woman  undertakes  a gigantic  reform  in  one  chapter  and  in  one  week. 
Life  is  rendered  almost  unendurable  during  that  time,  and  at  the  end  of  it 
she — the  heroine  of  the  house-cleaning, — collapses,  and  goes  to  bed  for  a 
fortnight.  If  she  used  Sapolio  every  week  in  the  year  the  dirt  would  be 
kept  down,  and  the  paint,  and  the  pots  and  pans  would  be  easily  brightened 
in  a few  hours,  ,10c.  a cake  at  all  grocers. 


GRAND,  SQUARE  AND  UPRIGHT 


Received  First  Medal  of  Merit  and  Di- 
ploma of  Hon  or  at  the  Centenrral  Exhi- 
bition, 1 876. 

First  Prize  Diploma  of  Honor  and  Hon- 
orable Mention  and  a Diploma  of  Special 
Excellence  for  Baby  Grands  at  the  Mon- 
treal Exhibition,  1 88  1 . 

Are  preferred  by  leading:  Artists. 

SOHMER  &u  CO., 
Manufacturers,  149  to  155  FOURTEENTH  STREET,  N.  Y. 


TSSJEfl  BEST 

WASHING  COMPOUKD 

EVER  UNVENTED- 
No  Lady.  Married  or 
Single,  Rich  or  Poor, 
Housekeeping  or  Board- 
ing, will  be  without  it 
after  testing-  its  utility. 

Sold  by  all  first-class 
Grocers,  but  beware  d 
worthless  imitations. 


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563  Seed-Time  and  Harvest 15 

568  Words  for  the  Wise 15 

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585  Tried  anil  Tempted 15 

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BY  BESANT  AND  RICE 

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257  All  in  a Garden  Fair 20 

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646  “ “ Vol.  II.... 25 

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says   15 

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lovell’s  library. 


BY 

16? 


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27? 

287 

420 

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458 

465 

474 

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558 

593 

651 

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689 

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718 
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REV.  JAS,  FREEMAN  CLARK 


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Dora  Thorne. 20 

Beyond  Pardon 20 

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Repented  at  Leisure  20 

Sunshine  and  Roses. 20 

The  Earl’s  Atonement 20 

A Woman’s  Temptation. 20 

Love  Works  Wonders 20 

Pair  but  False 10 

Between  Two  Sins 10 

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Hilda 10 

Her  Martyrdom 20 

Lord  Lynn’s  Choice 10 

The  Shadow  of  a Sin 10 

Wedded  and  Parted 10 

In  Cupid’s  Net 10 

Lady  Darner’s  Secret 20 

A Gilded  Sin 10 

Between  Two  Loves 20 

For  Another’s  Sin 20 

Romance  of  a Young  Girl 20 

A Queen  Amongst  Women 10 

A Golden  Dawn 10 

Like  no  Other  Love 10 

A Bitter  Atonement 20 

Evelyn’s  Folly 20 

Set  in  Diamonds 20 

A Fair  Mystery 20 


488  The  Water- Witch 

491  The  Red  Rover 

501  The  Pilot 

506  Wing  and  Wing 

512  Wyandotte 

517  Heidenmauer 

519  The  Headsman •. 

524  The  Bravo 

527  Lionel  Lincoln 

529  Wept  of  Wish-ton- Wish 

532  Afloat  and  Ashore 

539  Miles  Wallingford 

543  The  Monikins 

548  Mercedes  of  Castile 

553  The  Sea  Lions 

559  The  Crater 

562  Oak  Openings 

570  Satanstoe . . . , 

576  The  Chain-Bearer 

587  Ways  of  the  Hour 

601  Precaution 

603  Redskins  

611  Jack  Tier 

BY  KINAHAN  CORNWALLIS 

409  Adrift  with  a Vengeance 

BY  R.  CRISWELL 

350  Grandfather  Lickshingle 

BY  R.  H.  DANA,  JR. 

464  Two  Years  before  the  Mast 

BY  DANTE 


20 

20 

.20 

20 

20 

,20 

20 

20 

.20 

20 

.20 

.20 

20 

20 

20 

,20 

20 

20 

20 

.20 

.20 

25 

.20 


25 


20 


20 


BY  S.  T.  COLERIDGE 

Poems 


345 


Dante’s  Vision  of  Hell,  Purgatory, 
and  Paradise 20 


BY  WILKIE  COLLINS 


BY  FLORA  A.  DARLING 


The  Moonstone,  Part  1 10 

The  Moonstone,  Part  II 10 

The  New  Magdalen 20 

Heart  and  Science 20 

“I  Say  No” 20 

Tales  of  Two  Idle  Apprentices 15 

The  Ghost’s  Touch 10 

My  Lady’s  Money 10 

The  Evil  Genius 20 


BY  HUGH  CONWAY 


260  Mrs.  Darling’s  War  Letters 20 

BY  JOYCE  DARRELL 

315  Winifred  Power  20 

BY  ALPHONSE  BAXJDET 

478  Tartarin  of  Tarascon 20 

604  Sidonie 20 

613  Jack 20 

615  The  Little  Good-for-Nothing 20 

645  The  Nabob 25 


Called  Back 15 

Dark  Days  15 

Carriston’s  Gift 10 

Paul  Vargas  ; a Mystery 10 

A Family  Affair: 20 

Story  of  a Sculptor 10 

Slings  and  Arrows 10 

A Cardinal  Sin 20 

Living  or  Dead  20 

Somebody’s  Story 10 

BY  J.  FENIMORE  COOPER 

The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 20 

The  Spy 20 

The  Pathfinder 20 

Homeward  Bound 20 

Home  as  Found 20 

The  Deerslayer 30 

The  Prairie 20 

The  Pioneer 25 

The  Two  A-dmirals  . . • 20 


BY  REV.  C.  H.  DAVIES,  D.D. 


453  Mystic  London 20 

BY  THE  DEAN  OF  ST.  PAUL’S 

431  Life  of  Spenser - 10 

BY  C.  DEBANS 

475  A Sheep  in  Wolf’s  Clothing .20 

BY  REV.  C.  F.  DEEMS,  D.D. 

704  Evolution 20 

BY  DANIEL  DEFOE 

428  Robinson  Crusoe 25 

BY  THOS.  BE  QUXNCEY 

20  The  Spanish  Nun  .10 

BY  CARL  DETLEF 

27  Irene;  or,  The  Lonely  Manor 20 


3 


10 

38 

75 

91 

140 

144 

150 

158 

170 

192 

201 

210 

219 

223 

228 

231 

234 

237 

244 

246 

261 

267 

270 

273 

274 

282 

288 

293 

297 

298 

302 

437 

404 

498 

68 

76 

78 

86 

90 

92 

126 

132 

162 

168 

284 

451 

477 

530 

618 

621 

624 

721 

735 

737 

95 

761 

761 


LOVELL  S LIBRARY. 


BY  CHARLES  DICKENS 


Oliver  Twist 20 

A Tale  of  Two  Cities  20 

Child’s  History  of  England 20 

Pickwick  Papers,  2 Parts,  each 20 

The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth  10 

Old  Curiosity  Shop,  2 Parts,  each...  15 

Barnaby  Rudge,  2 Parts,  each 15 

David  Copperfield,  2 Parts,  each 20 

Hard  Times 20 

Great  Expectations 20 

Martin  Chuzzlewit,  2 Parts,  each. . ..20 

American  Notes  20 

Dombey  and  Son,  2 Parts,  each 20 

Little  Dorrit,  2 Parts,  each 20 

Our  Mutual  Friend,  2 Parts,  each..  .20 

Nicholas  Nickleby,  2 Parts,  each 20 

Pictures  from  Italy 10 

The  Boy  at  Mugby 10 

Bleak  House,  2 Parts,  each 20 

Sketches  of  the  Young  Couples 10 

Master  Humphrey’s  Clock 10 

The  Haunted  House,  etc 10 

The  Mudfog  Papers,  etc 10 

Sketches  by  Boz.  ...  20 

A Christmas  Carol,  etc. 15 

Uncommercial  Traveller 20 

Somebody’s  Luggage,  etc. 10 

The  Battle  of  Life,  etc 10 

Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood 20 

Reprinted  Pieces  20 

No  Thoroughfare 15 

Tales  of  Two  Idle  Apprentices 10 

BY  PROF.  DOWDEN 

Life  of  Southey 10 

BY  JOHN  BRYDEN 

Poems 30 

BY  THE  “DUCHESS” 

Portia 20 

Molly  Bawn 20 

Phyllis 20 

Monica 10 

Mrs.  Geoffrey 20 

Airy  Fairy  Lilian 20 

Loys,  Lord  Beresford 20 

Moonshine  and  Marguerites 10 

Faith  and  Unfaith  20 

Beauty’s  Daughters 20 

Rossmoyne  .. 20 

Doris  20 

A Week  in  Killarney .....10 

In  Durance  Vile 10 

Dick’s  Sweetheart ; or,  “ O Tender 

Dolores” 20 

A Maiden  all  Forlorn 10 

A Passive  Crime  10 

Lady  Brmksmere 20 

A Mental  Struggle \ . . . 20 

The  Haunted  Chamber 10 

BY  LORD  DUFFERIN 

Letters  from  High  Latitudes 20 

BY  ALEXANDRE  DUMAS 

Count  of  Monte  Cristo,  Part  1 20 

Count  of  Monte  Cristo,  Part  II 20 


BY  MRS.  ANNIE  EDWARDES 


681  A Girton  Girl 20 

BY  M.  BETHAM-EDWARBS 

203  Disarmed 15 

603  The  Flower  of  Doom 1U 

BY  GEORGE  ELIOT 

56  Adam  Bede,  2 Parts,  each 15 

69  Amos  Barton 10 

71  Silas  Marner ...10 

79  Romola,  2 Parts,  each 15 

149  Janet’s  Repentance 10 

151  Felix  Holt 20 

174  Middlemarch,  2 Parts,  each 20 

195  Daniel  Deronda,  2 Parts,  each 20 

202  Theophrastus  Such 10 

2C5  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  Jubal,and  other 
Poems 20 

207  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  2 Parts,  each .15 

208  Brother  Jacob,  etc 10 

374  Essays,  and  Leaves  from  a Note- 

Book 20 

BY  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON 

373  Essays 20 

ENGLISH  MEN  OF  LETTERS. 
EDITED  BY  JOHN  MORLEY 

348  Bunyan,  by  J.  A.  Froude 10 

407  Burke,  by  John  Morley.  10 

334  Burns,  by  Principal  Shairp 10 

347  Byron,  by  Professor  Nichol .10 

413  Chaucer,  by  Prof.  A.  W.  Ward 10 

424  Cowper,  by  Goldwin  Smith 10 

377  Defoe,  by  William  Minto 10 

383  Gibbon,  by  J.  C.  Morison 10 

225  Goldsmith,  by  William  Black 10 

369  Hume,  by  Professor  Huxley 10 

401  Johnson,  by  Leslie  Stephen 10 

380  Locke,  by  Thomas  Fowler 10 

392  Milton,  by  Mark  Pattison 10 

398  Pope,  by  Leslie  Stephen 10 

364  Scott,  by  R.  H.  Hutton 10 

361  Shelley,  by  J.  Synionds 10 

404  Southey,  by  Professor  Dowden 10 

431  Spencer,  by  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul’s.  .10 

344  Thackeray,  by  Anthony  Trollope.  . .10 

410  Wordsworth,  by  F.  Myers 10 

BY  B.  L.  FARJEON 

243  Gautran  ; or,  House  of  White  Shad- 
ows  20 

654  Love’s  Harvest 20 

BY  HARRIET  FARLEY 

473  Christmas  Stories . . 20 

BY  F.  W.  FARRAR,  D.D. 

19  Seekers  after,  God .20 

50  Early  Days  of  Christianity,  2 Parts, 

each 20 

BY  OCTAVE  FEUILLET 

41  A Marriage  in  High  Life 20 

BY  MRS.  FORRESTER 

760  Fair  Women  20 


4 


OUR  ROMAN  PALACE 


Or,  HILDA  AND  I. 


BY  E.  BEDELL  BENJAMIN. 


One  Volume , 12mo Paper,  20  cts.$  Cloth,  35  cts . 


Opinions  of  the  Press. 

“ One  of  tlie  most  charming  of  recent  novels  —Philadelphia  Item. 

“ It  is  refined  in  tone,  and  will  doubtless  find  many  readers  to  welcome 
it.”— New  York  Daily  Graphic. 

“ The  story  is  worth  the  reading,  and  Hilda  is  a character  that  must  excite 
sympathy  and  admiration,  especially  of  the  S.  P.  C.  Philadelphia  Eve- 
ning Bulletin. 

“ A love  story  of  the  better  class ; the  tone  is  elevating  and  refined,  and 
reading  it  is  like  living  with  nice  people,  and  enjoying  their  pleasures  and 
social  life.  It  is  one  of  the  most  fascinating  novels  we  have  seen  for  a long 
time.  A real  treat.”— Portland  Argus. 

“ What  shall  we  say  of  a book  in  which  is  not  one  love  story  alone,  but  in 
which  three  full-fledged  ones  are  concentered  ? The  author  writes  not  only 
entertainingly,  but  she  interweaves  much  that  is  excellent  in  tone  and  com- 
mendable in  precept  and  example.”—  Troy  Whig. 

“ It  is  pure  in  tone,  refined  in  sentiment,  and  with  a movement  sufficiently 
rapid  to  keep  the  reader  interested  to  the  very  end.  Some  conversations  on 
music  show  that  the  author  understands  the  divine  art.”— New  York  Evening 
Mail. 

‘“Hilda  and  I’  is  a rest  to  the  weary  after  the  turbulence  of  recent  un- 
limited folios  of  tragedy.  It  is  a rich  feast  of  pleasantness  in  all  possible 
directions.  Music,  art  and  all  charming  things  rise  up  before  one  in  the  right 
place  and  at  the  proper  moment.”— New  York  Home  Journal. 

“ Fresh  and  breezy  as  sea  air  ; full  of  originality  in  plot  and  incident,  with 
well-drawn  characters,  who  live  and  move  with  individuality  and  interest. 
The  heroine,  Hilda,  is  at  once  charming,  and  a new  creation  in  fiction.”— 

Godey's  Magazine,  Philadelphia. 

“ The  conversations  are  lively  and  sparkling— the  characters  are  always 
pure  and  true,  and,  although  sometimes  idealized  beyond  the  requirements  of 
a realistic  standard,  are  not  ud natural.  The  tone  of  the  story  is  high,  and  its 
moral  excellent.”— Bridgeport  Standard. 


JOHN  W.  LOVELL  00.,  PUBLISHERS,  NEW  YORK. 


By  Milne  own  soul’s  law,  learn  to  live  ; 

And  If  men  thwart  thee,  take  no  heed, 

^nd  if  men  hate  thee,  have  no  care— 

Sing  thou  thy  song,  and  do  thy  deed  ; 

Jope  thou  thy  hope,  and  i>ray  thy  prayei. 

And  claim  no  crown  they  will  not  give. 

John  G.  Wnrm»rc* 


JUST  PUBLISHED. 

INTEGRAL  CO-OPERATION  ! 

By  ALBERT  K.  OWEN. 

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buildings  suggested  for  “Pacific  Colony  Site,”  and  two  maps  showing 
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the  Rio  Fuerte  and  its  vicinage. 

Price,  30  cents*  Sent,  postage  free,  by  John  W.  Lovell  Co.,  Nos. 

14  and  16  Yesey  Street,  New  York  City. 


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Annual  Subscription,  $1/  site  months,  50c. j three  months,  25c . 

This  paper  (16-page  pamphlet)  is  devoted  exclusively  to  the  propaganda 
for  the  practical  application  of  integral-co-operation. 

While  being  an  uncompromising  exponent  of  Socialism,  the  Credit 
Foncier  urges  constructive  measures  and  counsels  against  destructive 
methods.  Its  Colonists  are  to  be  known  as  “ constructionists  ” and  “ individ- 
- ualists  ” in  contradestinction  to  a branch  of  socialists  who  favor  destruction 
and  communism. 

The  Credit  Foncier  presents  a matured  plan,  with  details,  for  farm, 
city,  factory,  and  clearing  house ; and  invites  the  farmer,  manufacturer, 
artizan,  engineer,  architect,  contractor,  and  accountant  to  unite  and  organize 
to  bniid  for  themselves  homes,  in  keeping  with  solidity,  art,  and  sanitation. 

It  asks  for  evolution  and  not  for  revolution ; for  inter-dependence  and  not 
for  independence : for  co-operation  and  not  for  competition ; for  equity  and 
not  for  equality ; for  duty  and  not  for  liberty ; for  employment  and  not  for 
charity ; for  eclecticism  and  not  for  dogma ; for  one  law  and  not  for  class 
legislation ; for  corporate  management  and  not  for  political  control ; for  State 
responsibility  for  every  person,  at  all  times  and  in  every  place,  and  not  for 
municipal  irresponsibility  for  any  person,  at  any  time  or  in  any  place ; and 
it  demands  that  the  common  interests  of  the  citizen— the  atmosphere,  land, 
water,  light,  jjower,  exchange,  transportation,  construction,  sanitation,  edu- 
cation, entertainment,  insurance,  production,  distribution,  etc.,  etc.— “be 
pooled,”  and  that  the  private  life  of  the  citizen  be  held  sacred. 


LOVELL’S 

LATEST 


LIBRARY. 

ISSUES. 


664  At  Bay,  by  Mrs.  Alexander 10 

605  Mornings  in  Florence,  by  Ruskin.,15 

665  Barbara’s  Rival,  by  Ernest  Young. 20 
607  Story  of  a Sculptor,  by  Conway..  .10 
60S  St.  Mark's  Rest,  by  John  Ruskin.,15 


669  Hilda,  by  Bertha  M.  Clay 10 

670  Deucalion,  by  Ruskin 10 

671  The  Scout,  by  Simms 85 

672  Slings  and  Arrows,  by  Conway 10 

673  Art  of  England,  by  Ruskin 15 

674  The  Wigwam  and  Cabin, by  Simms.80 

6T5  A Rainy  June,  by  Ouida 10 

676  Eagle’s  Nest,  by  Ruskin 15 

677  Yasconselos,  by  Simms, 80 

678  White  Heather,  by  Black 20 

679  Our  Fathers  have  Told  Us,  Ruskin.  15 

680  Confession,  by  Simms 80 

681  A Girton  Girl,  by  Mrs.  Edwards..  .20 

682  Proserpina,  by  Rusldn 15 

683  The  Ghost’s  Touch,  by  Collins 10 

634  Woodcraft,  by  Simms 30 

685  Val  d’Arno,  by  Ruskin 15 

686  My  Lady’s  Money,  by  Collins 10 

687  Richard  Hurdis,  by  Simms 30 

688  Love’s  Meinie,  by  Raskin  15 

689  Her  Martyrdom,  by  B.  M.  Clay . . . 20 

690  Guy  Rivers,  by  Simms 30 

691  A Woman’s  Honor,  by  Young 20 


692  Lord  Lynne’s  Choice,  B.  M.  Clay..  10 

693  Border  Beagles,  by  W.  G.  Simms.. 30 

694  The  Shadow  of  a Sin,  B.  M.  Clay..  10 

695  Wedded  and  Parted,  by  B.  M.  Clay.10 

696  The  Master  of  the  Mine, Buchanan.  10 

697  The  Forayers,  by  Simms 30 

698  The  Mistletoe  Bough, M.E.Braddon. 20 

699  Self  or  Bearer,  Walter  Besant  . . .10 

700  In  Cupid’s  Net,  by  B.  M.  Clay 10 

701  Lady  Darner’s  Secret,  B.  M.  Clay.. 20 

702  Charlemont,  by  W.  G.  Simms .30 

703  Eutaw,  by  W.  G.  Simms 30 

704  Evolution,  Rev.  C.  F.  Deems,  D.D.20 

705  Beauchampe,  by  W.  G.  Simms 30 

706  No.  99,  by  Arthur  Griffiths 10 

707  Fors  Clavigera,  by  Ruskin.  P’t  I.  30 

708  Fors  Clavigera,  by  Ruskin.  P’t  II.. 30 

709  Woman  against  Woman, by  Holmes . 20 

710  Picciola,  by  J.  X.  B.  Saintine. ...  .10 

711  Undine,  by  Baron  de  la  Motte 

Fouque 10 

712  Woman,  by  August  Bebel .80 

713  Fors  Clavigera,  by  Ruskin.  P’t  III. 30 

714  Fors  Clavigera,  by  Ruskin.  P’t  IY.30 

715  A Cardinal  Sin,  by  Hugh  Con  way.  20 

716  A Crimson  Stain,  Annie  Bradshaw. 20 

717  ACountryGentleman,Mrs.Oliphant.20 


718  A Gilded  Sin,  by  B.  M.  Clay 10 

719  Rory  O’More,  by  Samuel  Lover 20 

720  Between  Two  Loves,  B.  M.  Clay. . . 20 


721  Lady  Branksmere,  by  The  Duchess.  20 

722  The  Evil  Genius,  by  Wilkie  Collins.20 

723  Running  the  Gauntlet,  by  Yates. . .20 

724  Broken  to  Harness,  Edmund  Yates.20 

725  Dr.  Wilmer’s  Love,  Margaret  Lee.. 25 

726  Austin  Eliot,  by  Henry  Kingsley.. 20 


727  For  Another’s  Sin,  by  B.  M.  Clay.  .20 

728  The  Hdlyars  and  Burtons,  Kingsley  20 

729  In  Prison  and  Out,  by  Stretton. . . .20 

730  Romance  of  a Young  Girl,  by  Clay.20 

731  Leighton  Court,  by  Kingsley 20 

732  Victory  Deane,  by  Cecil  Griffith.  .20 

733  A Queen  amongst  Women,  by  Clay.10 

734  Vineta,  by  E.  Werner 20 

735  A Mental  Struggle,  The  Duchess., 20 

736  Geoffrey  Hamlyn,  by  H-  Kingsley.. 80 

737  The  Haunted  Chamber,  “Duchess’’.10 

738  A Golden  Dawn,  by  B.  M.  Clay. ...  10 

739  Like  no  Other  Love,  by  B.  M.  Clay.10 

740  A Bitter  Atonement,  by  B.  M.  Clay.20 

741  Lorimer  and  Wife,  by  Margaret  Lee.20 

742  Social  Solutions  No.  1,  by  Howland.10 

743  A Woman’s  Vengeance,  by  Holmes. 20 

744  Evelyn’s  Folly,  by  B.  M.  Clay 20 

745  Living  or  Dead,  by  Hugh  Conway.. 20 

746  Beaton’s  Bargain,  Mrs.  Alexander.. 20 

747  Social  Solutions,  No.  2,  by  Howland.10 

748  Our  Roman  Palace,  by  Benjamin.. . 20 

749  Mayor  of  Casterbridge,  by  Hardy.  20 

750  Somebody's  Story, by  Hugh  Conway.10 

751  King  Arthur,  by  Miss  Mulock 20 

752  Set  in  Diamonds,  by  B.  M.  Clay.. . . 20 

753  Social  Solutions,  No.  3,  by  Howland.10 

754  A Modern  Midas,  by  Maurice  Jokai.20 

755  A Fallen  Idol,  by  F.  Anstey 20 

756  Conspiracy,  by  Adam  Badeau ...  .25 

757  Doris’  Fortune,  by  F.  Warden 10 

758  Cynic  Fortune,  by  D.  C.  Murray. .,10 

759  Foul  Play,  by  Chas.  Reade. 20 

760  Fair  Women,  by  Mrs.  Forrester 20 

761  Count  of  Monte  Cristo,  Part  I.,  by 

Alexandre  Dumas 20 

761  Count  of  Monte  Cristo,  Part  II.,  by 

Alexandre  Dumas .20 

762  Social  Solutions,  No.  4,  by  Howland.10 

763  Moths,  by  Ouida .20 

764  A Fair  Mystery,  by  Bertha  M.  Clay.20 

765  Social  Solutions,  No.  5,  by  Howland.10 

766  Vixen,  by  Miss  Braddon, 20 

767  Kidnapped,  by  R.  L.  Stevenson — 20 

768  The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and 

Mr.  Hyde,  by  R.  L.  Stevenson. . 10 

769  Prince  Otto,  by  R.  L.  Stevenson. . .10 

770  The  Dynamiter,  by  R.  L.  Stevenson. 20 

771  The  Old  Mam’selle’s  Secret,  by  E. 

Marlitt 20 

772  Mysteries  of  Paris,  Part  I..  by  Sue.20 

772  Mysteries  of  Paris,  Part  II.,  by  Sue.20 

773  Put  Yourself  in  His  Place,  by  Reade.  20 

774  Social  Solutions,  No.  6,  by  Howland.10 

775  The  Three  Guardsmen,  by  Dumas.  20 

776  The  Wandering  Jew,  Part  I., by  Sue.20 

776  The  Wandering  Jew.  Part  II.,  by  Sue. 20 

777  A Second  Life,  by  Mrs.  Alexander.20 

778  Social  Solutions,  No.  7,  by  Howland.10 


779  My  Friend  Jim,  by  W.  E.  Norris  . . 10 

780  Bad  to  Beat,  by  Hawley  Smart. . 10 

781  Betty’s  Visions,  by  Broughton. 15 


782  Social  Solutions,  No.  8,  by  Howland.10 

783  The  Octoroon,  by  Miss  Braddon....  10 


Any  of  the  above  can  be  obtained  from  all  booksellers  and  newsdealers,  or  will  be 
sent  free  by  mail,  on  receipt  of  price,  by  the  publishers. 

JOHN  W.  LOYELL  COMPANY, 

Nos.  14  and  16  Vesey  Stkeet,  New  Yoke. 


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offered  from  time  to  time. 

If  there  is  anything  new  worth  knowing  you  will  find  it  in 
Tid-Bits.  • 

If  there  is  anything  new  worth  laughing  at  you  will  find 
it  in  Tid-Bits. 

So  much  intelligence,  liveliness,  and  humor  cannot  be 
had  for  5 cents  in  any  other  form. 

A sample  copy  will  be  sent  free  of  postage  to  anyone 
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100 years  established  as  the  cleanest  and  best  preparation  for^SHAVINC.  it 
makes  a profuse,  Creamy, and  Fragrant  Lather, which  leaves  the  Skin  smooth.clean.cool 
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